


A Little Test

by BabyCharmander



Series: The Redemption Line [1]
Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Psychological Torture, Revenge, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:05:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabyCharmander/pseuds/BabyCharmander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't deserve to float in space for eternity. He deserved much more pain than that, and she was going to see if she could give him every ounce of it without killing him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spark

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we go. I had originally posted this fanfic under an alternate name on FFN, but since most people know who I am now, there's no real point in using an alternate name here. 
> 
> In any case, as the the tags state, this story does contain torture. The characters are robots, yes (and they will remain robots in this story; you'll find no humanizations or androids here), but what happens is still very much torture, and I do not pull punches. If you are uncomfortable with this topic, I highly recommend you avoid this story.
> 
> However, the rest of the stories in this series are not as graphic as this one, and I did write the rest in such a way to make this first story in the series optional. If you're uncomfortable with torture you can skip this story while still reading the rest of the stories in the series.

"I'm sorry."

It was just two words. Two easy, easy to say words. Easier than "apple." But the problem was, it was hard to say them at the right time.

Wheatley had said them when it was far too late—when he wouldn't be heard by her, or anyone else. No-one that would respond, anyway.

"Space, space. Space. I'm in space. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, guess what, _space._ "

Even in the silent vacuum of space, Wheatley could still hear him, since Aperture Science Personality Cores had a short communication link to each other. It was supposed to have come in handy when the cores were linked to GLaDOS so they could help each other gang up on the AI. It didn't help, of course, but the fact remained that the link was there.

He'd honestly tried talking to the other core that kept a constant orbit around him, and asked him if he had any ideas on how to get back to Earth, among other things. But that had been a failure from the start, since the other core didn't _want_ to go back. At least, that's the reason he'd thought the yellow-eyed metal ball didn't actually answer. It soon became apparent that he wouldn't answer any of his other queries, either, even if they were _about_ space.

"Why, exactly, do you like space?" he'd asked out of desperation one day.

"Space. Space. Love space. I'm in space. Love space."

"Okay, okay, fine, why do you _love_ space?"

" **SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!** "

Wheatley had cringed at the sound, which had nearly fried his audio receptors, and decided not to attempt communicating with him quite as often.

That "him," he'd learned, was called Space Core. He'd discovered the other core's name when it was attached to him, back when… _that_ happened. Apparently, when a new core was attached to that body—that massive thing that allowed whatever core was the head of it to run the facility—it would give the owner of the body data on the core, including name and function.

One of the many, _many_ not-so-brilliant ideas Aperture Science came up with.

It was how GLaDOS knew his true name.

"Intelligence Dampening Sphere" is what she'd called him. She'd recognized what he was when he was first installed, and had managed to resist him. It was one of the main reasons his primary function had failed.

One of the first of many, many failures.

But… well, it couldn't be so bad _now_ , at least, could it? There was nothing he could fail at here, just floating around. Nothing could go wrong—nothing could go worse than it already had.

" **SPACE**! Hey, hey, space. Sun. Hi. Hi, sun. Space. Love space."

Wheatley jolted out of his introspection, twitched, then gave a frustrated sigh as he watched a few copies of Space Core drifting across his broken vision. "Can't even get a bloody moment of peace, here, can I? Can't even wallow in my own misery?"

" _I'm in_ _ **space**_!"

"Oh, would you just _shut up_ all ready?!" he cried, eye shields narrowing and pupil contracting in frustration. "We've been at this for ages, and you won't shut your bloody trap! It's bad enough being stranded out here without _your_ incessant rambling! I mean, who talks as much as you?" He paused, noting the hypocrisy, and added, "A-and about _one_ thing all the time! You don't even care, do you?"

"Space. Space, space. Love space."

"But _I_ don't! And you know what else I don't love? Your bloody rambling! I wish I didn't have to _hear_ from you anymore!"

And, with that, he promptly shut himself into sleep mode.

He'd had to do it often, not because he was tired—that was probably impossible for a robot—and not because he really _needed_ to conserve power—since Aperture Science devices tended to have a ridiculous battery life—but because he needed it to keep sane. He couldn't just spend… however long he'd been spending in that endless void trapped with his thoughts, and trapped with Space Core. So he'd put himself in that dreamless, blank sleep mode and keep himself there for as long as his processor would allow.

Normally the mode would only allow him to sleep for an hour at a time, after which he'd "wake up" and have to force himself back into sleep mode again. It was some safety feature, he'd figured, to make sure the cores didn't fall asleep for too long and miss something important. But sometimes during that interval, he'd get lost in his thoughts—or more often, attempt to talk to himself over Space Core's ramblings—and wind up stuck like that for a while.

He would get into imaginary conversations, thinking of the various people he would like to talk to: his engineers, for making his primary function so obvious it was bound for failure; some of the old bots he'd worked with, for kicking him out of so many different jobs; GLaDOS—or rather, a potato-ified version of her, since the real version was too scary for him to even think about for too long—for being… well, herself; and…

That last one.

He'd found himself in an imaginary conversation with her, once. It hadn't been his first one—he'd had many, far more than he would even like to count—but at one point, it had just degenerated into a stream of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—!" repeated so often, to the point where it seemed like even Space Core had picked up on it.

"Sorry, space. Sorry, sorry, sorry, space. Sorry, space."

By the time he snapped out of it, he decided he needed to do something about his sleep mode. While normally only one of the Aperture Science engineers could work on him, he could hack himself. After all, he _was_ an expert hacker, though his hacking… tended to take a while. But he had quite a few whiles to spend where he was, so he spent a fair amount of time trying to hack into his own system, until he got to the password "Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-B." Once in, he changed the maximum time limit for sleep mode to…

…Well, he didn't really want to remember. Remembering how long he would go into sleep mode would help him calculate how long he'd been stranded.

And so he slept, for God knows how long, before finally opening his eye shields to the unsurprising, uninteresting sight of space.

…But something was different.

Different was usually good. It meant some sliver of excitement in what would probably be the rest of his life. But he couldn't shake the feeling that this was a _bad_ sort of different, and the feeling nagged him constantly—like that dreadful Itch he'd had, like GLaDOS's incessant taunts, like Space Core's—

His cracked pupil contracted into a pinprick.

"S-Space Core?" he whimpered, swiveling his optic around. But there was no sign of the corrupted core in the vast expanse around him. "O-oh no, I didn't—I didn't really… I—I didn't think that would actually work. I-I didn't even really _want_ it to work…!"

Horror overwhelmed him, drowning out his other senses, and making him unaware of the slight change in his orbit.

* * *

The security camera lingered on the mound of moon rocks that was being prepared to be ground up for conversion gel. This had become a normal procedure for the facility; conversion gel was one of the three gels she'd started using in testing again, and it had to be harvested once every few months. In an attempt to save money on space travel, Aperture had built a machine that could scrape up moon rocks, store them, and transport them back to the facility using an internal portal device. Unfortunately, the cost of building the thing and sending it to the moon outweighed anything they'd saved, but that didn't stop GLaDOS from using it.

Normally it would only scrape up moon rocks. Sure, you'd get the occasional human bone or scrap of a space suit, or even, on rare occasions, a full-out skeleton, but never anything that moved, let alone _spoke_.

"Space. Space. Wanna go back to space. Need space."

" _Oh_ ," came a voice from the single speaker in the room. The camera jerked, zooming in on the corrupt core that was trembling and rocking back and forth in the pile of rocks. " _I suppose you got knocked out of your orbit._ "

"Space," the core replied. "Didn't like to talk about space."

" _Really. That must be why you talk endlessly about it._ "

"Love space."

The speaker was quiet for a moment. " _That little moron didn't like to talk about space. Where is he?_ "

"Space, space. Gotta go back to space."

The tone from the speaker got a little harsher. " _You're not going back to space. You're going back to the corrupt core bin until I find something better to do with you._ " Immediately a panel pulled away from the wall, and a large claw stretched out, snatching up the chattering core and dragging it in. " _As much as I would like to see you ground into bits, I don't want to harm the moon rock grinders. They never did anything wrong._ " The panel slammed shut, and the camera lingered on the pile of moon rocks for a moment before lowering.

GLaDOS's eye narrowed as she peered through another camera, watching as the Space Core was dropped into the corrupt core bin, back with the other one she'd detached from her body. The core howled in protest, screaming about wanting to go back to space, and she shut off the audio receptors from the room so she wouldn't have to hear it.

That core having been taken care of, she wondered what to do about the _other_ core that was still drifting in space. She certainly hadn't forgotten him—no, she'd held on to that fury, that bitterness that she'd been harboring after he'd shoved her into a potato and nearly destroyed her facility. But she'd had better things to do than exact revenge on the little moron. Revenge was sweet, but Science was sweeter.

That didn't mean she hadn't thought about it, of course. During the slower moments of testing with the humans and the co-op bots, she would think back to the moron, wondering what she should do to him, should she ever get her claws on him again. There were many options—many she'd contemplated over the past five years since he'd been shot into space. Some options she'd discarded, while others she thought upon for some time. In fact, she'd even had a few things prepared for his arrival, when the time was right.

Perhaps it was.

Her eye opened a little wider and tilted up toward the ceiling as she opened a connection with a device located far, far from the facility—and the planet. The moon rock harvester was equipped with a camera, and she peered through that to see the lunar surface.

The camera's lens was battered with scratches from the sharp rocks, but still functional enough. She turned it about, looking across the rocks and craters, and stopped upon finding an unusual shape among the rocks. It was almost perfectly round.

Yes, the moron's altered orbit had followed the Space Core's. Perfect.

GLaDOS issued a few commands, waking the moon rock harvester and sending it trundling toward the unsuspecting core.

* * *

Wheatley had hardly cared when he landed on the lunar surface. Yes, it was another change, but for once it didn't matter. Rather than curiously observing his new surroundings, he kept his eye shields shut and handles folded over his round body, shivering and muttering to himself. "Oh, I-I can't believe I managed that… I'm sorry, mate! I-I didn't really mean it… I've managed to mess everything up again, when I can't even move! Why can't I get anything ri—"

He gave a start upon feeling something touch his side. His eye shields snapped open, revealing nothing but the light from his blue optic reflected off some kind of dirty metal. He heard no sound, but he could feel himself being dragged, and unconsciously held his handles more tightly against himself to keep them from catching something and breaking.

Part of him was terrified, but another part was wondering just what in Aperture was happening to him. Before he could voice his concern, he was sucked into a cramped chamber, which was lit by a strangely familiar orange light…

* * *

"Ugh…" Wheatley blinked, his optic rolling about as he gazed wearily around the room. He could hear his inner workings, which sounded absolutely bizarre after hearing nothing but his and Space Core's voices over the communication link for so long. "Where am I…?"

The first thing he saw was a wall with an enormous blue oval, through which he could see nothing but black. He knew what it was, but it was so strange to see he almost didn't want to believe it. Rolling to the side, he gave a yelp to find he could actually feel something beneath his casing—gravity was in effect.

As he stared at the other side of the room—which had traces of gray dust on the floor and a tube on the wall—a speaker crackled to life.

" _Hello, moron._ "

If he could jump, he certainly would have, but instead his pupil contracted into a pinprick and his eye shields opened wide. " _Oh, no._ I-I'm back _here_?"

The speakers emitted a sound of slow clapping.

He tried to smile, eye aperture relaxing a little and lower eye shield pulling up a bit. "Well, i-it's, uh, it's nice to not be f-floating around in space, you know? Thought I was gonna be drifting around up there for eternity. Not a pleasant thing, really, so—"

" _I'd say 'welcome back,' but you're not really welcome here._ "

"What?" It was suddenly a little more difficult to maintain his smile. "B-but you brought me back here, right? …D-didn't you?"

" _Why would I bring a little idiot like you back to the facility_ that he almost destroyed _?_ "

His eye aperture contracted almost completely shut, and his voice went up a few pitches. "Uh—well—I could… make it up to you. Somehow. I'm sure you could find some use for me, you know? Something I could do. I mean, I've had a lot of jobs before, and—"

" _You're right._ "

A panel on the wall abruptly snapped open, and Wheatley gave a startled cry.

" _I_ do _have a use for you._ "

A claw shot out of the wall, snatched up the core, and dragged him in. Immediately the panel closed behind it, drowning out Wheatley's terrified screams.

* * *

GLaDOS could have found a simpler way to bring the moron to her chamber, but what would be the fun in that? Instead, she transferred him from claw to claw behind the walls of the facility's various rooms, making sure that his transfer would be as rough as possible without doing significant damage to the core. She turned on as many audio receptors as she could along the route he took so she could savor the sound of his screaming. He didn't deserve every minute of the terror—he deserved _much_ more punishment than that. And she was going to see if she could give him every ounce of it without killing him.

A little _test_ , if you would.

Gradually the screams got closer, and one of the panels at the top of her chamber opened. The claw he'd been transferred to flung him out, and another extended out of the ceiling to catch him. He was still yelling, even as she held him, his eye shields shut tight.

Drawing her massive frame closer, she gazed down at him. He was covered in scratches and dents, some from the rough transfer, others probably from space. One side of him, she noted, was coated in small scratches and still had traces of rough gray dust on it. She recognized a few of the scars she'd given him before when she'd crushed him, and briefly wondered how just how damaged he was already. As she looked him over, he twitched once, releasing a few sparks.

"AAAAA—oh, I'm not moving anymore, am I?" Cautiously he cracked open his eye shields, and gave a startled yelp upon seeing GLaDOS's optic inches away from his own. His voice hiked up a few pitches until it was nearly a squeak. "H-hello."

" _It's been a long time._ "

He flinched. The words had jogged a nasty memory, and she was glad to see it.

" _Let's see how you've been._ "

"Wh-what? Agh—!" He trembled in her grasp as she drew him closer to the center of the floor, toward a specific panel. It opened to reveal a few arms, which attached a cable to the port on his back. "Gah! Wh-what was that? What've you put onto me?"

" _I could plug you into the usual ports, but those are a bit too comfortable._ " She let go, letting him fall to the ground with a satisfying _clunk_ and a groan. " _This should work just fine._ "

Wheatley had shut his eye shields to protect his optic from contact with the floor, and kept them shut—until he felt a foreign presence sorting through his memory files. "Hey! Those are private!" he cried, gazing up at GLaDOS with an expression of mixed horror and anger. "Get out of there!"

The hulking AI looked down at him, and immediately a jolt of electricity flowed through his circuits as white-hot pain, making him scream yet again. His vocal processor was already strained, and it was showing. But as soon the pain started, it stopped, leaving him panting on the floor. "Wh-what was…?"

" _You'd best not tell_ me _to do anything. You will do as_ I _say, moron,_ " she said lowly, stretching her body down so she could bring her head closer to him. " _If you don't, you're going to make things a whole lot more painful for you._ "

Another jolt seized him for a split second, and he gave a pained cry. "A-all right, go ahead, it's yours! I really don't care what you look at, really…" There was no truth behind the words, but what other choice did he have?

Wheatley twitched as he felt GLaDOS prodding through his memory files again. It was like a spider was crawling around inside him, its little legs poking into his mind, and he could do nothing to try to get it out unless he wanted it to bite him again. Giving a quiet whimper, he watched the giant form of the AI above circle him and examine his every move, even as she dug around his thoughts.

The spider's claw caught something, and dragged it to the front of his mind.

" _I'm sorry! Please, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean any of that stuff… I-I made a bloody mess of things, and it was all my fault! W-well, actually, I think some of it might've been that body, you know, and that Itch and all that, but—but please, you've been my only friend, just forgive me, forgive little, stupid, pathetic ol' Wheatley, that's all I ask—"_

" _This sort of apology comes up a lot in your memory banks_ ," GLaDOS noted. The spider's claw slowly turned, winding up the memory before letting it go again, replaying it, and repeating the process a few times. " _Very… interesting._ "

Wheatley felt sick as the other AI prodded into the memory—one of the times he'd imagined himself in conversation with _her_. "I-I really meant it—mean it," he muttered. "Is—is she still around?"

The sick feeling was quickly chased away by a spark—one he hadn't felt in ages. It was a warm glow that filled him completely, and his eye shields opened wide. "She's still alive, isn't she? I can finally tell her! Oh man alive, I thought I'd be drifting around in space until my processor wore down, but now I can finally tell her—"

" _She's gone._ "

The glow began to fade, and he scrambled to grab hold of it again. "W-well, maybe she'll come back, and—"

" _I dumped her out of the facility shortly after I threw you out into space. It's been five years, and she hasn't come back. And she truly, never will._ "

"F-five years? That's how long I've…?" It was a bit of a shock, but still, he wasn't going to let that warmth—that _hope_ —get away so easily. "But she's _still alive_ , out there, and _maybe_ she's thought back to me, and forgiven me! She's had—what did you say—five years to think it through—"

" _And five years to recall every insult, every injury, every hurt you threw at her._ "

It couldn't get away. "But it's been so long! Maybe she's forgotten about all th—"

" _You tried to_ murder _her. More than once. She helped you get that power you craved, and you betrayed her._ "

He held tight. "I'm not _listening_ to you _…_ "

" _You_ used _her._ _You told her you_ hated _her._ "

"I'm not hearing a thing—!"

" _So why—_ "

"No!"

"— _do you think—_ "

"B-be quiet…!"

"— _she wouldn't hate_ you _?_ "

Wheatley's pupil contracted in fury, and he thrashed his handles, almost wishing he could open his casing to make himself look bigger. " _SHUT UP_!"

The pain shot through him again, coursing through his circuits until he thought he would crash from the sheer agony of it all. When it finally left him, he was panting weakly, eye shields half-shut, and vaguely aware that GLaDOS was glaring at him.

"Never _tell me to shut up._ "

Another jolt of pain seized him, and he jerked his handles over his face, curling up as best as he could as he cried out. This bout left him faster than the last one, but he remained curled up, his optic shut tight.

" _Hmmm. Perhaps breaking you will be easier than I thought._ "

Wheatley shook his face slightly. "N-no," he whispered, cracking open his eye shields and lifting his handles. Though his outer casing was dented, scraped, scarred, and scorched, he felt a strength within. "If she's still alive… there's always a chance…"

" _Oh, good._ "

His eye shields opened a little wider, and he looked up at GLaDOS in surprise.

" _I like a challenge._ "

And again the pain filled him, more intense than before, drawing out his shout into a scream that was starting to sound glitched.

GLaDOS watched this for a moment before hiking the pain up half a level.

And finally, Wheatley crashed.


	2. Height

It wasn't a typical thing, he figured, for robots to dream. Maybe being in space for so long had messed with his processor enough to make him see things when he slept. That made sense, didn't it? He remembered some stuff he'd read about humans, back when he was supposed to be taking care of the test subjects, like how they had dreams almost every time they slept. He wasn't really sure how they could stand that, especially after learning that occasionally they'd have particularly nasty dreams—nightmares.

That must've been what he'd had. Being out here in space had so messed with his poor processor that he was dreaming and having nightmares.

On the plus side, that meant none of what he had seen was real. It sure _felt_ real—going back to Earth, _her_ voice, being dragged to her chamber, the pain, the memories, _her_ voice, the pain… He swore he could still feel it. It was one heck of a nightmare, but at least that was all over, right?

…No, he hadn't entirely convinced himself. He was a little too nervous to open his eye shields, but, hey, he couldn't feel anything beneath him now, so that was a good sign. If he was floating through space, he shouldn't be able to feel anything beneath him…Wait, but he _could_ feel something, something pulling down on him, something like…

… _gravity._

Wheatley's eye shields snapped open, and his pupil contracted first from the light, and then from seeing that he was suspended _quite_ high off the ground. He couldn't see how high on his own, having no depth perception, but a helpful little internal program cheerfully pointed out that he was about 26 feet, 4.3 inches away from the floor.

" _It wasn't a dream_ oh no no no no…" He tried to look away from the floor, but the fact that he was hanging from the ceiling made that just a bit difficult. And, he noted, he was hanging from the ceiling by a thick cable that was plugged into his back port, which was really getting rather sore.

His optic swiveled as he tried to find something other than the floor to stare at, and quickly spotted a familiar form hanging next to him. GLaDOS, however, seemed completely unaware of his presence; she was staring, very intently, at a spot on the floor.

"Hey, hey, uh, d'you—d'you think you could, uh, lower me? You know?" Wheatley stammered, twitching. "K-kind of high off the ground right now, just a little, so if you could lower me, or, uh, put me on a management rail—yes, that might be a bit better—that would be fantastic, a-absolutely fantastic…"

Suddenly he remembered the threat she'd made if he ever dared tell her to do something, and twitched again. The massive AI hadn't responded, but he wasn't sure she hadn't heard him. "Uh—! That was a—a suggestion, right. N-not really _telling_ you to do anything, really, just _suggesting._ You don't, er, have to take the suggestion, of course." He gave a nervous laugh, attempting to smile, but a light spark from the port on his back quickly changed that. " _OH NO NO I'M FALLING I'M FALLING I'M—_ oh no, wait, it hasn't dropped me yet… _oh, no_."

Wheatley had been flailing his handles and swiveling his optic during his panic, and while he'd stopped, the damage had been done. The cable he was hanging from began to swing back and forth, just a little, but it was enough to make him sick to his circuits.

He really, truly wished to hurt the brilliant scientist that had decided that personality cores should be able to feel nausea.

Snapping his eye shields shut, he tried to shut out the feeling of dangling some twenty-odd feet above the floor, but he could still feel the motion. Still determined to distract himself, he did the one thing he did best: rambling. "As if making us feel bloody artificial pain wasn't enough, they had to give us bloody artificial nausea… Really, what purpose was that supposed to serve? Oh, right, the whole 'why not' thing… I'd like to have a word or two with whoever came up with that bloody slogaaannn it's not working I am going to be _sick_. D-dunno how, but I swear I am."

Seeing that nothing else was working, he cracked open his optic to look back at GLaDOS. "H-hey, um, if you're, uh, awake, d'you think you—er, this is just a, a _suggestion_ of course—that you could let me down or something _please_? I'm up r-rather high and I feel sick and I swear this cableAAA _AAGH_ _IT'S GOING TO DROP ME—_ no, no, that was just another spark but—but please, maybe, j-just lower me j-just a little? Possibly? Maybe? Just—"

" _There you go._ "

Wheatley jerked back in shock, succeeding in giving the cable a bit of a wider swing.

" _Now, just keep your other arm from breaking, and you'll have a good chance at finishing these next few tests._ "

The personality core shut his eye shields again as he swung back and forth, shaking badly as he focused everything on trying to rid himself of his nausea.

GLaDOS's body turned, and she gave what almost looked like a genuine start. " _Oh. I'd forgotten you were here._ "

"I-I'm bloody sure you did," Wheatley muttered, voice strained.

" _I've been quite busy with testing. There is always Science to be done, after all, and Science goes before giving little morons what they deserve._ "

"Not a moron…"

" _But I did take the opportunity to sort through your brain again. I've noticed you have quite a lot of fears. Height, being one._ "

Wheatley's eye shields snapped open to reveal an unfocused pinprick of a pupil.

" _So, in case you woke up while I was in the middle of testing, I decided to suspend you from the ceiling in preparation for later._ " She tilted her head, drawing herself closer to the ceiling so she could get closer to him. " _It looks like you've managed to torment yourself quite well without my help. I'm impressed._ "

_Clap, clap, clap._

"Oooh…" He twitched, feeling sick for an entirely different reason than the motion-induced nausea, but he managed to narrow his optic a little. "Y-yes, I've done a good job of that, h-haven't I? I guess you could just leave me to myself, poor ol' Wheatley tormenting himself—oh, maybe on the floor, yes, that'd make me feel _real_ awful."

" _You seem to be forgetting something._ "

A claw descended from the ceiling, reaching toward Wheatley. But rather than opening its pinchers, it nudged them into his casing, pushing him closer to the AI in the center of the room. At the same time, GLaDOS loomed closer, her yellow optic narrowing.

"You're _the moron. Not me._ "

The claw retracted, leaving the core to swing in an even wider arc. He made a choked noise, shuddering in his casing, and his eye shields snapped shut again. Some detached part of him wished desperately that he could have some release for the nausea, which was starting to make him feel dizzy and disoriented. He remembered one thing humans typically did when they felt sick like this, but it was disgusting, not to mention completely impossible for a robot to do.

If he couldn't release the feeling, he _had_ to be able to do something to distract himself from it. Something to block it out, something—

"Oh! Why didn't I think of _that_ before?!" he muttered, eye aperture dilating beneath the shields. He began rummaging through his programming, looking for something he'd found quite useful in space, but was more than a little surprised when an error flared up in his processor. "What—?"

" _I forgot to mention_ ," GLaDOS said with about as much of a shrug as her frame could muster. " _I also went through and disabled some programs you didn't need. Like that pesky sleep mode._ "

Wheatley's vocal processor emitted a horrified, glitched, garbled sound that could have only come from a robot.

" _My current test subject should be arriving at his next chamber now. Have fun._ "

Her frame hung slightly more limp as she turned her head to stare at the floor.

" _Now there, stop crying. You should know that turrets are drawn to the sound of sobbing. And by extension, so are their bullets._ "

Wheatley ignored her for the most part, but did briefly wonder if sobbing was a good idea when there weren't any turrets around. But… if he focused on the _good_ things that were happening, maybe this wouldn't be all that bad.

"I-I haven't fallen yet, that's one thing…" he mumbled. "And that means I'm not dead yet, s-so as long as I'm alive, I've still got a chance of getting out of this, maybe. And there's the sliver of a chance that she's forgiven me… I hope…" He twitched. "A-and even if I don't have my sleep mode, at least I'm not floating in space! And…"

He opened his eye shields, noting with relief that he wasn't moving quite so much now. "A-and I'll stop swinging in a couple moments. That's a huge relief, that is."

And immediately the claw descended from the ceiling, nudging him once more.

* * *

"Please, please just _stop_?" he muttered weakly when the claw nudged him for the umpteenth time, sending him swinging into another sickening arc. "I… I actually think I've gotten used to it, now. I-in fact, I quite enjoy it. Oh no, you hear that? Little Wheatley _likes_ this punishment. Better stop doing it, then."

It was a lie from the pit of Android Hell, but Wheatley didn't know what else to do. He wasn't getting used to the nausea—it was getting _worse_ , and he was feeling so sick he could hardly think. He swore he could feel his insides twisting in his casing, and part of him hoped that they really were—maybe he would dislodge something and make himself crash. But then, that might also kill him, so it wasn't the best plan.

None of his plans were, really.

He shuddered in his casing, optic rolling as he swung back and forth, back and forth, waiting for the motion to stop. "Oh, this is _great fun_ , it is," he said, voice wavering from the dizziness. "Wooo, so, so much fun… I'd sure hate for this to stop."

Much to his amazement, the claw descended again, but this time opened up and caught him, holding him in a gentle grip that didn't hurt his casing. His eye plates opened fully in surprise. "It—it worked? Er! I mean… oooh no, it stopped! What am I going to do? Oh, this is so _terrible._ "

It was hard to keep the smile from showing in his optic as he felt his nausea _finally_ begin to ebb away. And the claw still hadn't moved! "Oh, that's tremendous—I mean, tremendously _bad_. Tremendously _terrible_ , yes." He relaxed, sinking back into his casing and closing his eye shields as the sick feeling gradually left. "So bloody terrible…"

The feeling was blissful after being subjected to that motion sickness for so long. If he were some organic being, he would probably be tempted to doze off. Being held by a claw and suspended from the ceiling was almost _comfortable_ after what he'd been through.

But slowly he became aware of a slight tug at his back port, and he opened his optic in confusion.

The claw had pulled him back until the cable was taut, and his casing was brushing the ceiling.

His pupil contracted, and he gave a quiet whimper.

And rather than simply dropping him, the claw _flung_ him, sending him swinging across the chamber until he hit the ceiling with a loud _clunk_. His nausea came back in full force and combined with a hellish headache to form some monster of agony he hadn't even known _existed_ before this.

"AAAAAAA _AAAAAAAAAA_!" He swung back to the other side of the room, coming just short of hitting the ceiling again, then went for another dizzying swing. He was screaming, but his self-preservation programming was also screaming at him to do something other than panic. "Uh—uh—hey, you know? I don't even care anymore!" he cried, voice high-pitched and strained. "I-I don't like it or hate it. Completely neutral now! Yep! N-no effect whatsoever! So y-you can stop this, now, really! I r-really think we're d—"

The cable sparked, and just as he started to tell himself to not panic because nothing was going to happen, it disconnected him, sending him flying across the room.

" _NO_! NONONONONONONO— _agh_ —!" He spun in his casing as a claw snapped onto it, catching him just before he hit the floor.

" _You know what? You're right._ "

Wheatley shut his eye, moaning.

" _That's enough of that. Though I must admit, your sad attempts at deception were rather amusing._ " GLaDOS pulled him to the center of the room again, attaching him to a cable on the floor this time.

"I… I thought you were testing…" he mumbled dazedly, cracking his optic open. But the sight of her staring at him was a little more than unsettling, and he shut his eye again.

" _The subject fell into acid half an hour ago. Since then, I've been watching you._ " There was a smug grin in her voice. " _Speaking of, I'd like you to do the same. Look at me, moron._ "

He kept his eye shields shut, shuddering, then yelped when he felt a bolt of electricity course through his circuits.

"Look _at me._ "

He opened his eye and stared at her wearily, feeling genuinely tired for once in his life.

" _I'm not a monster._ " She extended her optic and gave him an accusing look. " _Not like_ you _were. And while it would be fun to watch you lose your mind, I'm not nearly done with you yet. So I'll let you go into sleep mode for a while._ "

His eye shields drooped partway closed. "Th… thank you…"

" _Don't feel too grateful. You'll have a new torment waiting for you as soon as you wake up._ " She gave a low, unpleasant laugh.

Wheatley twitched as GLaDOS set him down on the floor. He wasn't sure what to expect, but he pushed through his exhaustion and tried to make himself focus on something good. He was going to sleep, and shut out the rest of the world for a while. Whatever horror he would face when he woke up, there was a chance that maybe, possibly, it wasn't as bad as this. But knowing GLaDOS…

" _Good night, moron._ "

His vision faded, the last thing he saw being her malevolent yellow optic.


	3. Three Fears

In space, there were times when he wished his sleep mode could last forever.

It was always at his lowest points. Normally he'd find some spark to hold on to, some hope, but sometimes that would fade, and he'd be left drifting through space, feeling tiny, worthless, and utterly hopeless. What were the chances of his returning to Earth? What were the chances of his ever seeing _her_ again?

Fortunately these moments of absolute depression were few and far between. He was Wheatley, after all, not some hopeless core stuck at the bottom of the corrupted core bin. He'd always manage to find some way to cheer himself up.

But now that he was out of space and into GLaDOS's metaphorical (and sometimes physical) claws, he felt tiny and helpless once again. His future in space had been uncertain, but _here_ he could tell where things were going, and it was not a happy future. He was at GLaDOS's mercy—or rather, her lack thereof. He was at her _nothing_.

He didn't want to wake up to return to that world.

But maybe, possibly, _something_ would happen that would enable him to escape. Maybe she would put him on a management rail, or maybe by some odd glitch she might accidentally give him control over a few panels, and he could escape through the walls. Maybe even _she_ would forgive him, and come back to save him.

As long as he knew she was alive, there was always that possibility.

" _Do you really still think that?_ "

Wheatley's shock was followed by a literal shock of electricity—just a short jolt, but enough to yank him completely through his wake-up process. "Aagh…" he groaned, opening his optic and looking up at the malevolent AI in desperation. "C-can't I at least keep my _thoughts_ private?"

Another wicked jolt seized him, this one lasting a few seconds longer and resulting in a louder yell. " _What did I say about telling me what to do, moron?_ "

He was getting sick of that word. "I am _not_ a mor—aaaaggghhhh!" The pain coursed through him again, but he narrowed his optic. "I-I'm not! I was just giving a suggestion!"

" _Did you forget that you were programmed to give_ bad _suggestions?_ " GLaDOS lowered her head, bringing her optic closer to his. " _You will always have terrible ideas. It's inescapable._ " Here she paused, waiting for him to twitch before continuing. " _But that doesn't mean you don't deserve punishment for it._ "

She shocked him again, savoring his scream before backing off.

Wheatley panted as he lay on the floor, eye shields half shut. His sleep mode, however long it had been, had helped him, but he was already getting tired after being attacked repeatedly. In a weak attempt to face away from her, he rolled over to his side, but she retracted the cable attached to him just enough to make him roll back to his original position. "S-so what are you planning this time?" he asked, giving another involuntary twitch. "I-I don't think you can do much worse than swinging me 'round like you did last tiiiii… why did I ask that, why did I ask that, why did I ask that—"

" _Because you are a moron and are incapable of saying anything remotely intelligent._ " GLaDOS's optic zoomed in on him a little. " _But it doesn't matter that you essentially challenged me to make your next torment worse, because I have been planning on making it that way from the start. Your punishment will be long, drawn out, and increasingly painful._ "

Somehow her monotone made everything worse, and Wheatley shuddered in fear. "B-but… you won't kill me."

" _No._ " She raised herself higher, making herself look further down at him. " _But you'll wish I would._ "

His optic contracted, and he gave a quiet whimper.

She swung her chassis around, inspecting some of the panels closer to the ceiling. " _During that last… experiment, you had some control over what was happening to you, in that you effectively made things worse for yourself. Otherwise, what happened was relatively predictable._ " He could hear the very, very slight smile in her voice. " _But even I don't know exactly how things will go with this next part._ "

"H… how's that?"

" _Because I won't be the one to torment you._ " A panel slid open. " _Attack, my little killers._ "

Instantly the chamber was filled with the harsh cries of three crows as they fluttered noisily into the room. It took them mere seconds to spot the little core on the floor.

"AAAAGH!" Wheatley fought with all his might to scoot backward, flailing his handles as he tried to get away from the birds. But this hardly deterred them as they dove at him repeatedly, jabbing at him with their beaks. "BIRD! BIRD! BIRD!"

" _I considered putting you into a potato, you know,_ " GLaDOS said offhandedly. " _After all, you put me into one, and left me to be devoured by birds._ "

Too terrified by the onslaught of beaks and talons to respond properly, Wheatley only gave an inarticulate cry of fear. He yanked his optic away as another bird dove, but this only resulted in the beak jabbing him right on a scar, which in turn resulted in a yelp.

" _But I realized that in your current state, you are as helpless as I was. You have no claws, no limbs, no way of movement on your own, and hardly a brain._ " She cocked her head. " _You're nothing without a chassis or a management rail. Just as helpless as a potato._ "

The birds were growing bolder, and one managed to perch on his side. "No—no— _stop_!"

" _It's good you have a fear of birds, because I happen to have a trio of birds. And I've trained them specifically to attack the people I don't like._ " Her voice took on a bitter tinge." _Such as worthless little cores like you._ "

The crow launched its beak into the hole in Wheatley's side, snapping at his sensitive innards.

The scream that came from him was a horrifying mess of earsplitting screeching and static, and managed to temporarily scare the crows away.

" _Very good, Johnson_." GLaDOS's optic glowed a fraction brighter. " _I see your training has paid off._ "

Wheatley rolled erratically in his casing, which was about as close as he could get to writhing in pain. "Help, _help_!" he cried, and was subsequently horrified to find his voice still plagued by a scratchy static.

" _It sounds like Johnson was able to damage your vocal processor. I might encourage him to remove it entirely, but then, that would mean being unable to hear your screams._ "

"S-so stop it!" His eye shields narrowed, then snapped completely shut as a jolt of pain seized him. "Gaaaah…!"

" _Why don't you stop it yourself? Oh, wait, because you have no means of doing so. You have no way to defend yourself._ " GLaDOS raised herself higher, glaring down at him as the birds swooped toward him once more. " _You're as defenseless as_ you made me."

"Th-that was five years ago— _gah_!" He rolled to the side, barely missing the bird's beak, and flailed his handles as another crow came closer. "Get over it, mate!"

" _Oh, I'll get over it. Once I've ripped every shred of hope from your feeble processor, and inflicted every single excruciating ounce of pain you deserve._ "

Before Wheatley could express his strong disapproval of this plan, one crow leaped onto his lower handle and reared its head back dangerously. His self-preservation programming kicked in, and he jerked his handle toward himself in an attempt to shoo the bird off.

The screech that resulted surprised him, as did the genuinely shocked, " _Oh!_ "

The crow slid off of his casing, giving a few grating cries. Flailing its wings against the ground, it pulled itself away, mangled talons dragging behind.

Wheatley watched in amazement, and his eye lit up in a smile. "Hah! Showed that bloody little bird, didn't IIII _AAAAAAAGH_!"

The electricity clawed through him more violently than ever before, and for a brief, terrified moment, he wondered if he really _would_ die. The agony was enough to make the seconds seem like minutes, and only when the core was nearly about to crash did it finally stop. Before he could even emit a dazed moan, he felt a powerful grip at either side of him that yanked him upward, ripping him from the cable he'd been connected to.

GLaDOS leaned in close enough so that her slit of an optic was nearly touching his dot of a pupil. " _What_ "—she held him tightly in her claw—" _was_ "—she began to squeeze—"that."

The claws crunched into his casing.

Wheatley made a sound that was very close to a human sob, twitching a few times miserably. " _Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh_ … I-I was… just…"

She increased the pressure a fraction.

" _I was just defending myself please don't kill me…_!"

" _I'm afraid_ ," she began, her voice taking dangerous tones, " _that I may do just that._ "

"No, _no_ , _nononono_!" He shook his optic, whose aperture was nearly contracted shut. "Y-you said you weren't going to kill me!"

She shook him hard enough to make him spin in his casing. " _I am going to keep you away for a while, and you_ _are going to_ pay _._ " For a moment she went quiet, turning to look at the bird that was still flailing pitifully on the floor. " _Sorry. Make that,_ suffer." And she turned her optic on him again, its aperture relaxing. " _And don't worry. I really won't kill you._ "

By this point, he knew better than to expect her to say that for a reason beneficial to him, but he was going to ask anyway. "R-really…?"

" _Death is too merciful for a monster like_ you _._ "

The claw yanked him into the ceiling, and the panel slammed shut behind them.

* * *

Wheatley kept his eye shields shut tight as he was dragged around the insides of Aperture, zooming around from claw to claw like a hellish roller coaster. He hated it as much as he had the first time, but this time he tried to force himself not to scream. Though he wasn't completely sure GLaDOS could hear him, he didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

But the transfer was rough—possibly rougher than it had been before, though the first time this had happened seemed like ages ago. The claws didn't seem to care about giving him a few extra scratches or dents this time, and that in combination with the motion sickness he was getting made him wish he could just shut down for a while and wait this out.

After what seemed like an eternity, the claw let go, and nothing caught him. Caught off-guard, he gave a yelp that was cut short when he banged into the floor. Odd. Where was he…?

Curious, he opened his eye shields, and gave a start.

Nothing.

He could see absolutely nothing in the room but sheer blackness. Not a light, not a faint outline of some form, _nothing._ For a split second he worried that he'd been blinded, but soon found his blue optic lit up a tiny portion of the room. That was it.

"Wh… where am I?" he murmured, shuddering when he heard his own scratchy voice again. Much to his surprise, the voice hardly reverberated. "D-don't tell me…"

Experimentally he rolled off to one side, and heard a faint _clunk_ as his casing touched a wall. He tried rolling to his other side, then back, then forward, but each time resulted in the same faint _clunk._

He was in a tiny, cramped room, just barely large enough for him to fit.

"Oh… Th-that's bloody brilliant, that is," he grumbled. "Yes, look at that stupid little robot. Don't want him, so let's put him in a bloody _box._ Brilliant." Idly he tried to put himself into sleep mode, and gave a static-filled sigh when he found it still disabled. "I didn't even _do_ anything to deserve this…! Just defended myself from a bloody bird, that's all! Wonder if _she's_ ever had a bird try to peck her optic out."

His eye shields narrowed at the thought, but slowly widened when he recalled what she'd said. "Sh-she… did." The thought left him silent for a moment, and he twitched. "W-well that was her fault, wasn't it?! …I did turn her into a potato, but she bloody deserved it! She d-deserved to be punched down into that pit, and had birds try to eat her—"

He yelped when everything around him began to move. A mechanical whirring sound filled the walls, and the room began to expand. But still there was no light, and he shuddered when he realized he couldn't see what the room had expanded _to._

Wheatley feared darkness. He had ever since he'd gotten stuck in a dark wing of the facility, long before he'd woke _her_ up, and wandered lost there for a few weeks. He was not equipped with night vision like some of his fellow bots, and while he _did_ have a flashlight, he'd been told it would kill him if he tried using it. In hindsight, he realized an engineer had probably just told him that to test how gullible he was.

…Wait, his flashlight! With a spark of hope, he searched for the appropriate program, only to find that it had, like his sleep mode, been disabled.

"Oh… hah-hah, nice one," he stammered, glancing around the room. "P-put me in a big empty room just to scare me? Well, it's not gonna work! Not at—"

Something _enormous_ went flying just centimeters over his face, and rammed into the wall beside him. It stayed there for a moment before retracting, allowing a few pieces of what Wheatley assumed was once the wall to come clattering down to the floor. A few fragments bounced off his casing, but he was too stunned to care; what little he could actually see from the reflected light of his optic showed several rows of very pointy objects.

Spike plates.

He'd never been afraid of those before. After all, he'd found them and used them to try to kill GLaDOS and _her_. They weren't so scary when you were the one using them, but _now_?

Gears whirred within the walls again, and another spike plate slammed down into the floor next to him. It came just short of crushing him, hitting the edge of his casing and knocking him off a distance. " _AAAGH_!" he cried, whimpering when he wound up rolling over onto his face. "O-okay, I don't know if you can hear me but you've clearly demonstrated just how terrifying these things can be, and you know I never actually wound up crushing _you_ with them so you don't have to do that to me so _please don't_!"

The room was silent, and Wheatley blinked. "…Oh, w-well, thank y—"

The floor began to drop with the speed of a broken elevator, and simultaneously, some nasty-sounding gears whirred to life above.

"GAAAAAAH! NO! _Nonononono_!" Wheatley wasn't sure whether to keep his optic open or to shut it; he could see nothing either way, and doing either wouldn't shut out the feeling of dropping or the sound of the spike plate chasing him downward. "Please stop please stop please stop—!"

Miraculously, the floor obliged him by coming to a sudden halt. The plate above him did not.

It paused when a few of its points grazed the top of Wheatley's casing. At this point, he had rolled at an odd angle with his face diagonally facing the plate, and the spikes kept him pinned that way. He emitted a static-filled whimper, optic darting around in a feeble attempt to see what would happen next. "I-I know you're just trying to scare me!" he called, his voice just a static-y squeak. "A-and… it's working! S-so you've proven your point! The spike plates are scary! Th-the darkness is scary! I-I'm feeling all punished now so _can we please be done_?"

In response, the gears above whirred to life, and the spike plate slowly drove downward.

"Oh gosh please no oh gosh please _no_!" He was nearly sobbing at this point as the spikes pushed into his side and pressed his other side against the floor. It took seconds before the metal began to buckle, and half in agony and half in terror, he flailed his handles, one banging into a spike and the other striking the floor.

"Th-this…" he realized, cringing in horror, "i-is what I was going to do to _her_?!"

The plate stopped, hesitated, and retracted.

"Oh thank God…" Wheatley gasped, whimpering as he rolled back on his casing, his handles relaxing and going nearly limp. His whole outer shell was hurting, and it was getting more difficult to turn himself in his casing. "I-I thought I was going to… But… I can't believe I t-tried to kill her with those…!" He twitched, and the floor around him was briefly lit by the sparks. "Th-that would have been _horrible_."

" _And so will this._ "

Without further warning, the plate came slamming back down again, and didn't stop before it hit the floor.

A rather astounding array of colors exploded into Wheatley's vision—his optic had glitched from the sheer amount of agony he was in, and in some distant part of his processor he was aware that he was screaming. This was in spite of the fact that the plate had entirely missed his spherical body, and instead rammed into the part of the floor right beside it—where his lower handle had been resting.

" _I read the notes the engineers wrote about the personality constructs, once_." GLaDOS's voice was as casual as if she had just glanced up from a book to make a comment. " _Supposedly they made the handles the most sensitive part of the core's outer casing, since that was what the humans would use to carry them. I thought that was interesting._ "

The colors faded, and the darkness of the chamber gave way to the darkness of unconsciousness.


	4. Isolation

GLaDOS glared through the camera, waiting for the little moron to crash before she turned away. That was enough of _him_ for a while.

Her yellow optic turned down toward the floor, where the injured crow was still lying. Its siblings were currently perched on the AI's chassis and preening their feathers, while it remained still, occasionally turning its head. Slowly the panel it was sitting on rose high up toward the ceiling, where another panel had pulled away to reveal a large nest made from sticks, wires, and potato plant leaves.

" _Don't worry, Caroline,_ " GLaDOS said, carefully tilting the panel at an angle so the crow gently slid into the nest. " _That moron's pain will double for what he did to you._ "

The crow stretched its wings for a moment to balance itself, then turned to watch as the panel it had been sitting on lowered back to the floor.

The AI watched to make sure the crow didn't show any other signs of distress before switching her vision to the cameras in the cryosleep chambers. She flicked through a few of the screens, searching for a test subject that looked promising. After finding a few and sorting through their files, she finally selected one and began the process to transfer it to one of the test chambers.

Of course, the moron would be waking up soon, so she'd have to take care of him in a while. She wanted him to suffer, especially after what he did to Caroline, but more than that, she wanted— _needed—_ to find a new subject that could actually make it to the final test, or maybe even into a second set of tests. Or a third. She did have a few hundred test chambers she hadn't used in a while, after all.

But she couldn't delay that little idiot's torment for too long. She didn't want him to think she was going easier on him, after all…

A thought occurred to her, and she gave a quiet laugh. Ah, there were many advantages to being a genius, such as not having to suffer through problems like this for very long. There was a very simple solution to this dilemma that would work _just_ fine…

Her optic glowed in pleasure as the new test subject awoke in chamber zero.

" _Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center…_ "

* * *

It was a strange memory to wake to. The woman—not _her_ , but one of the humans he'd tried to help before—had gotten… well, hurt. Hurt badly enough that she could no longer stand, let alone move. He'd called out to her, again and again, asking her to _please_ get up, because they needed to find the portal gun to escape, but she wouldn't move. He'd apologized repeatedly for bringing her to the wrong chamber, but it didn't matter—she wouldn't move.

It wasn't as though she had _died_ —he knew how humans died, and how they looked when they died. But she had still been conscious, and still… making noise. He'd known, because she'd screamed when she fell.

After yelling at her and encouraging her and trying everything he could to get her to move, and _still_ she wouldn't get up, he'd finally left her. He'd needed to find another human to escape.

He hadn't understood how she could be hurt so badly that she couldn't move, though it could have had something to do with the way one of her legs was bent, and that red fluid—blood, he remembered the term later—he'd seen leaking from her. But could it really be _that_ bad?

Yes. It could.

He finally understood as he lay on the floor in that cold, pitch-dark chamber, his whole outer shell aching, his vocal processor sore, and his lower handle… broken, to put it simply. That hurt more than anything, and he imagined it was about how the woman had felt when she fell down that pit and broke her leg. It hurt, and he could not move.

Well, he _could_ , but to be more precise, he didn't _want_ to move. Attempting to move in his casing resulted in various parts of his insides banging into or scraping against his badly-dented outer shell. And then there was trying to rock his casing from one side to another. It was more difficult than before, for one, but it was also _excruciating_ if his lower handle touched the floor, which it would if he even _tried_ to rock himself.

It was a wonder the handle was still attached to him. The spike plate had crushed it right into the ground, so it was probably looking more than a little flattened and banged up. Because one side of a spike had caught part of it, that part was dented at an ugly angle—not that he could see it, but he could definitely _feel_ it. And to top it off, one side of it was threatening to fall out. It still hung by a few wires that were probably a part of the artificial nervous system so pointlessly strung throughout him, and once again he wished he could hurt his engineers.

Wheatley stared up at the ceiling, or at least, where he assumed the ceiling was. The room was as dark as it had ever been, and he couldn't tell what was what anymore. He could hardly even see his own handles—but then, he hadn't really tried, had he? Might as well; he had absolutely nothing else to do.

He moved his upper handle over his face, and the blue light from his cracked optic illuminated all the dents and scratches across it. It could be worse. Moving that handle back, he went to move his lower handle toward his optic—

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA **AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!** " he screeched, twitching several times. "Oh… th-that was _not_ my best idea…" He twitched again upon hearing his own voice—it sounded worse than it had before. Had he hurt his vocal processor again somehow? "O-okay, no more yelling, right… n-no more yelling. A-and no more moving that handle, until… until…"

He paused.

Until an Aperture scientist repairs him? Until GLaDOS accidentally tosses him right into a nanobot work crew site?

"I'm… I'm n-never getting repaired, am I?"

The thought had never occurred to him. He hadn't really had the _chance_ to consider it between getting electrocuted, swung around from the ceiling, attacked by birds, crushed by plates… After going through that hell, he was never going to get repaired.

And things were only going to get worse from here.

His eye aperture contracted, and after a few moments he realized he was trembling.

"N-n-no," Wheatley stammered, shutting his eye shields tightly. "The lady… sh-she'll come back for me. She'll forgive me and she won't leave me here when she does. I-I just have to wait. That's all. But would she know how to repair me?" He opened his eye and shuddered. "Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if she didn't, so long a-as she just got me out of here…!"

He twitched again. "But… w-would she find me in here?" He didn't even know where "here" was. Mentally he cursed himself for keeping his eye shut on the way here; it had helped a little with his motion sickness, but now he didn't know how he'd gotten from GLaDOS's chamber to this room. "She'll… she'll probably bring me back to that lair, though."

The thought was barely comforting. Yes, the lady would be able to more easily find him in GLaDOS's chamber, but the only reason GLaDOS would bring him back there would be… He shuddered.

"Hang on… How long have I been here, anyway?" If he'd ever had some kind of internal clock, it had stopped working ages ago. Even so, it still wouldn't have helped—the last thing he wanted to do was find out just how long he'd been tortured like this.

But now it was starting to bother him. How long had he been out, and how long had he been lying here, lost in thought like this? And, more importantly, how long would it be until GLaDOS dragged him back to her lair?

"P-probably busy doing one of her bloody tests again," he muttered, eye shields narrowing. "Right, 'Science goes before little morons.' 'Cept I'm not a little moron." He cringed suddenly, as though expecting to be zapped for the comment, but relaxed when he remembered he wasn't hooked up to anything. "…Y-yeah, you hear that?" he said, a little louder. "I'm not a moron! And you can't do a bloody thing to make me say otherwise! Can't zap me with that stupid electricity of yours when I'm not hooked up to anything. Hah!"

Wheatley was proud of himself for the realization, and let his lower eye shield pull up in a grin. He let that feeling of pride fill him, trying to drown out all the other feelings—his worry of what would happen next, his fear of GLaDOS and the darkness around him, the pain from being zapped and pecked at and crushed and—

He jerked back, emitting a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a yelp, then screeched again when his body rocked back forward and caused his injured handle to hit the floor. "Aaaaagh…!" His optic, the pupil of which had contracted considerably, darted around uselessly as he tried to see the ceiling. "Th-the spike plates! H-how did I manage to forget about those bloody things…?! Oh, i-if you heard that, p-please don't— _suggestion_ , right, j-just a suggestion, not really _telling_ you—don't crush me again? Y-you've already done that once, a-and doing the same thing twice would—would be j-just a little repetitive, wouldn't it?"

He twitched, the sparks briefly lighting a small section of the floor next to him. "…N-no, but then she'll just move on to s-something worse…" But what could be worse than what had already happened? Crushing his other handle? Punching him in the optic and blinding him? Ripping off his outer shell? Cutting out his vocal processor? Which of those was even _worse_?

Realizing he'd just said all that out loud, he twitched. "O-oh, er, I know you d-don't like to take my suggestions, s-so you don't have to take any of those, right? R-really, bad ideas, th-that's what I was made for." His insides twisted; it hurt to admit that.

But if she didn't take any of those suggestions, what would she do? He couldn't think of much else—which was something of a blessing, since imagining all the torments GLaDOS could put him through was _not_ on his list of top ten things to do—but not knowing what she had in store for him was all the more terrifying. If she didn't do any of that, then maybe all she could really do was just leave him alone.

Wheatley lay there, blinking, and slowly his eye widened as the idea sank in.

The reason GLaDOS hadn't dragged him back yet was because _she had no plans to._ She would leave him all alone, just like he'd left the poor woman in that test chamber.

"O-okay, okay," he tried to reassure himself, though his voice had taken a slightly higher pitch. "N-not as bad as it sounds. If she doesn't drag me back, that means she won't be hurting me anymore. Y-yes. That's a good thought. She won't hurt me. I'll just stay here, not hurting any worse than I already am—" he twitched again, "—e-even though it bloody _hurts_ —but what if my handle falls off? W-would that hurt worse? A-and then I couldn't put it back on, a-and… I'll never get repaired, s-so it won't stop…!"

It was true that his simulated pain was very close to human pain, but there was a difference: while human pain could fade after a while because the human's body would eventually repair itself, most robots had no such ability, and the pain would persist until someone repaired them. And if things kept going as they were for Wheatley, that would never happen.

He would lie there in that dark room, alone and hurting until his processor wore down.

He shut his eye shields tightly. "N-not the first time I've been alone, not the first time," he muttered, voice strained. "I-I was alone, when the scientists all died… But then I was on my management rail and I could actually _move_ and explore places." A shudder racked his casing, and he choked back a cry of pain. "Okay, but when I was in space I couldn't move, exactly… B-but then I was with Space Core—oh, I'm actually missing _him_?—and, and I wasn't hurting all over… And there was sleep mode! Man alive, _sleep mode_! I-I don't even have that—"

His voice cracked, and he choked back another sound—this time a sob. "…Only _she_ c-can put me in sleep mode, w-when she has me all hooked up…" And able to dig through his memories, and listen in on his thoughts, and shock him until his processor was nearly fried, and _he would rather have that,_ just for the _chance_ of her putting him into sleep mode so he could be dead to the world for a while.

"But _she_ —that lady—is going t-to come back and save me," he whimpered, cracking his eye open. "Sh-she has to. H-however long it takes, she has to come back because she can't leave me _here._ " Glancing up, he waved his undamaged top handle a little. "I-I'll wait however long… If she just holds me again, i-it'll be okay."

If he could actually see anything, he would have noticed that his vision was blurring a little.

"J-just… don't be too long, luv? _Please_?"

* * *

She didn't come for him.

He knew he could exaggerate things sometimes—just a little—but if he was any judge, he had been sitting there for _days_ , if not longer. Days, and he hadn't heard a sound—not GLaDOS's mocking voice, not any mechanics in the walls, not even the squeak of rusted metal. All he had heard was his static-y, whimpering, bloody pathetic voice as he tried to convince himself that the lady was still going to come for him, trying to talk himself out of absolute despair.

Even Space Core's incessant ramblings were better than this.

And the pain hadn't stopped, of course. His casing still hurt, his vocal processor was still sore, and he was pretty sure one of the wires on one side of his poor handle had finally given way.

It _hurt_. All his artificial nerves _burned_ in pain when he felt the wire give in his handle. But on the bright side—and that was very, _very_ loosely speaking—it had given him an idea. It was an absolutely crazy idea, and probably as stupid as most of his other ideas tended to be, but he was so desperate to get out of his agony and loneliness that he didn't care at this point.

…Well, he _did_ care, since if something went wrong, he might even die. And dying meant he wouldn't be able to apologize to _her_ , wouldn't be able to be able to see her lovely face, wouldn't be able to feel her gentle grip on his only working handle… But if he didn't at least try, he might lose his mind before any of that happened.

Wheatley could not activate his sleep mode. Hacking didn't work; he'd gone through literally every password combination of the six possible characters, which had fortunately eaten up a good number of hours. Apparently GLaDOS had done more than simply change the password. But there was something else that could make him dead to the world for some stretch of time. Half of him was terrified of the thought, while the other half was desperate enough to try it.

If he was overloaded with enough pain, he would crash.

And since GLaDOS was doing nothing to hurt him, he would have to do it himself.

He shuddered in his casing. Yes, it was probably a horrible idea, but his horrible ideas were all he had at this point.

"Th-this… is going to hurt," he muttered, wincing. "But—but that's kind of the point. If I can just bear a _little_ more pain, I-I won't feel it for a while. …No, wait, I _won't_ bear it because it'll m-make me crash." He was starting to feel sick to his circuits. "W-what am I supposed to do? There's my lower handle, th-that already hurts a lot… And moving it makes it hurt worse, so—so maybe if I try to move it around a little, I'll—why am I doing this to myself, what if I break it?"

Wheatley shut his optic. "No, no, stop it, j-just stop thinking about it and do it, and then you'll be out for a while. Right. On three." Mentally bracing himself, he prepared to move his handle. "One…" He took a useless, simulated breath. "…Two…" He was starting to shudder. "Thr—OH NO NO _I CAN'T DO IT_!"

His optic contracted and his handles jerked toward his spherical body in an automatic response to his jolt of terror, unconsciously doing what he'd been too scared to do to himself.

Bright, beautiful, horrible colors flashed in front of his glitching optic, partly distracting him from the pain that seized his circuits. If his vocal processor was doing something other than screaming, it was probably saying something like, "Please just crash please just crash please _please_!" He wasn't even sure what was going on now, his processor was getting so jumbled from the overwhelming sensations.

When the colors finally began to fade, he was, for a split-second, distraught that they did not give way to the blackness of unconsciousness. But then he became very aware of his surroundings.

He was no longer in the dark room, and a claw was carrying him, very rapidly, around Aperture's vast innards—out of the frying pan, and into the fire.


	5. Apart

The birds were gone, and GLaDOS was, for the moment, alone in her chamber. She still had the camera in test chamber nineteen activated, focused on a spot in the acid moat where the bubbles had finally ceased rising to the surface.

Eighteen tests—longer than most of her subjects in the past _four months_ —and he'd died from a simple _misstep,_ missing the moving platform and falling into the acid moat. The AI had even gone through the trouble of reconfiguring the end of the test to _not_ end in the incinerator, but instead lead to the start of the next set of chambers.

The test subject had seemed so promising, and her calculations had made her almost 95.275% certain that he would complete the first set of tests and move on. Normally she didn't care so much about keeping the test subjects alive; the deaths of the test subjects would just become more data for her to examine and ponder over. But she'd been so sure that she finally had a test subject that would last longer, maybe even as long as the mute lunatic…

It was infuriating, to say the least, but at least now she had someone to take out her frustrations on. And at the same time, it was someone who just happened to still need to be punished. Perfect.

She worked the remote claws as quickly as they would allow without dropping their cargo, not really caring if it got banged up along the way. It only took a few minutes before a panel opened on the ceiling, allowing a claw to descend.

" _It's about time you got here, moron._ "

Wheatley reluctantly opened his eye shields, which now bore a new scratch across them. But at least it was the shields that were damaged and not the optic itself. "H… hello," he said in his static-filled voice, twitching. A small part of him was nearly overjoyed to actually see and hear _someone_ again, but the rest of him was scared and sick, horrified to be in the sadistic AI's presence again. His mangled casing made it difficult for him to turn his eye away.

" _I was going to leave you in there another week or so, you know,_ " GLaDOS growled. " _You should be grateful._ "

He twitched again at this new information. "A-another _week_?"

" _Yes, such a short time. I was far too merciful_." Her optic narrowed as she looked him over, noting the wires poking out of the broken handle. " _It looks like you've managed to damage yourself further on your own. Impressive._ "

"Y-yeah," he stammered, finally forcing his optic to look away from hers, glancing off to the side. "I-I sure did. I-in fact…" An idea struck him, and his optic glowed a fraction brighter. "I-I don't think you need to h-hurt me anymore, since I can do it p-pretty well, myself. So then you could, er, let me go!"

" _Good idea._ "

Wheatley blinked. "W-wait, you're reallAAAAAAGH!" In the middle of his sentence the claw had opened, dropping him to the ground with a loud _clunk_. Moaning in pain, he struggled to move his optic to see what the other AI was doing now.

" _You really don't know when to give up, do you?_ " she asked, lowering herself to bring her optic closer to his again. " _What makes you think I would honestly want to be merciful to a waste of scrap metal like you?_ "

"B… because I'm not a w-waste of scrap metal?" he asked, cringing.

" _Perhaps not. After all, scrap metal can be used for things. And I can use you to take out my frustrations._ " Without warning, she jabbed a cable into his back port. " _Let's see what you've been up to in that room I so graciously gave you._ "

The vicious, unwelcome presence dug through his thoughts like a spider—a very, very large, unfriendly spider. "Er—there's n-nothing there, mate," Wheatley muttered, wincing. "R-really, nothing interesting at all— _aaagh_!" A short jolt of electricity, but it was enough to make him think twice about protesting again; it hurt a lot more than he'd remembered.

The spider's claw flipped through several of the memories, going over them back and forth. It was as though they were replaying in his mind, rewinding, and replaying again. "I-I was just…!"

"Still _hoping for that mute lunatic to forgive you? I should be surprised. No, I shouldn't. You're just that predictable. You were programmed to do stupid things, like believing some human you backstabbed will turn around and forgive you. You keep thinking this, over and over again…_ " The AI cocked her head, zooming her optic in. " _I've heard of tenacity, but this is just sad._ "

Wheatley tried to glare at her, but still couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze. "Sh- _she_ had tenacity, too…"

" _Which has absolutely nothing to do with forgiveness or mercy. In fact, I think if she knew of your current situation, she would feel you deserving of it._ " If she could give him a scowl, she would have, but it showed in her voice all the same. " _And for once, I would be inclined to agree with her._ "

It was a sickening thought—not the lady's refusing to forgive him; he would never let himself believe that—but rather, that he _deserved_ all this. He knew he'd betrayed her, but surely being out in space for five years made up for at least some part of that, and he was honest-to-God _sorry,_ and he would do anything to change what he'd done to her. But… the spike plates, yeah, maybe he deserved that one, since he'd tried to crush them—

" _And don't forget leaving five helpless humans to die_."

"Nnghh—!" He twitched and shuddered; he'd forgotten GLaDOS could invade his thoughts like that. "I-I didn't know what else to do!"

" _So you acknowledge that you are completely incompetent._ "

"I—"

GLaDOS snagged another memory before he could protest. " _Oh, and what's_ this _?_ "

His eye shields widened, and his optic aperture contracted sharply. That memory was much more recent, and quite literally painful.

" _Did you really try to injure yourself badly enough to crash?_ " Her quiet laugh boomed in his audio receptors. " _You should have told me that's what you wanted._ "

Wheatley's voice went up a few pitches. "Wh- _what_? Agh—!" Feeling the panel beneath him shift, he struggled to get away while trying to keep his broken handle from touching anything.

" _I would be_ happy _to oblige you._ "

Three or four mechanical arms shot out from beneath the opened panel, clamping onto different sections of his outer shell. Panicking, he struggled all the more, in spite of the near-blinding pain in his handle and the soreness in his casing. His simulated breathing quickened and his eye aperture contracted nearly shut when one of GLaDOS's claws descended nearby. "O-oh no, no, y-you can't do this, _no_!"

" _It's not a matter of what I_ can _do. It's what I_ should _do._ " Slowly the claw loomed toward the core. " _For example, should I dismantle a stupid little metal ball like you?_ " The claw hesitated.

"No no no no _no no no_!" He shook his optic, trembling uncontrollably in his casing.

" _Actually, that's a question the morality core should be answering for me._ " The pincers opened. " _And she's not here right now._ "

"NO! NO! _NO_!" He jerked back, fighting with everything he had in a vain effort to get away from the claw, but the mechanical arms held tight. His cries of protest quickly turned to screams when the claw clamped onto his broken handle and slowly, carefully began to pull.

Wheatley couldn't even hear himself screaming at this point, but this time his optic didn't immediately glitch. He saw the flashes of sparks as the remaining wires on one side gave, one by one— _snap, snap, snap—_ and that side was free, allowing the claw to focus on the other side. He could hear the creaking of the metal over the sound of his own voice, and feel every joint and every artificial nerve that strained against the force—

An explosion of color flashed in front of his optic before he finally crashed.

GLaDOS kept her optic focused on him as she pulled the claw away, carrying the hunk of metal that was once a handle with it. Without looking away, she bent the handle in two and tossed it aside.

Well.

That was a good warm-up.

* * *

" _RUN, RUN! Run, for goodness sake!"_

_He was zooming along his management rail far above the limit, but on occasion he did remember to stop and wait for her. "Okay, quick recap: we are escaping! That's what's happening now; we're escaping. So you're doing great—just keep running!"_

_And she_ was _running, right alongside him, running brilliantly fast for a human. It was exciting and terrifying all at once, fleeing from that murderous AI and finally escaping this hell they'd both been trapped in for so many years. And "hell" is certainly what it sounded like at the moment, with metal screeching all around them as the walls began to close in._

" _She's bringin' the whole place down!" he cried, voice cracking in panic. "Hurry!"_

_They both saw the lift up ahead, and unconsciously worked their respective legs and management rails faster. "The lift! The lift! Get in the lift!"_

_The walls were coming closer, but they were almost there! Just a little more, and they'd be on their way to freedom—_

_Electricity bolted down the rail, surging through him and freezing him in place. "Agh! No! J-just keep running, I'll catch up!"_

" _You can stop hallucinating any time now._ "

"Wha—"

He was not on his management rail, the lady was not there, and the murderous AI he'd been running from was hovering right over him. It didn't take long for Wheatley to feel the nagging pain somewhere in his casing, where a few broken wires of his artificial nervous system occasionally gave off sparks. Dazedly running a self-diagnostic, he found his lower handle unaccounted for, and sank back into his casing.

" _You know, I was thinking. I have a lot of experience with personality cores. A lot of_ bad _experiences, mostly. I mean, they_ were _created to control me as some sort of artificial leash. But Science can never get done unless you're given free rein to do whatever you like. So I started with corrupting those annoying little cores._ "

"A-are… are you going to corrupt me?"

" _Idiot. I already did that twice. Once when they first shoved you onto me, and again after you stole my body._ " GLaDOS looked up, appearing thoughtful. " _So I thought up another plan. Something that might give me a more positive experience with your kind._ "

"A-ah, that's, uh, n-nice of you…" He twitched, sparks shooting from the corner of his optic and from the points where his lower handle should have been attached.

" _And what could be more positive than Science? Running tests, calculating results, seeing how things work…_ " She gazed down at him at that last remark, and went silent.

"D-do you want me to show you something? Er—how something works?" He raised his lower eye shield in a hopeful grin.

" _You could say that._ "

There was a quick mechanical whirr, and suddenly he was surrounded by about twelve threatening mechanical arms.

Wheatley's pupil contracted to a pinprick, and he immediately began to squirm away, flailing his handle uselessly. "That's—that's completely unnecessary, mate!" His squeak of a voice was nearly indistinguishable beneath the static. Meanwhile, the arms were reaching toward him. "Th—the engineer's notes! You said you read them! You already read all that that stuff so isn't this just a little—just a little _repetitive_?"

" _I like to be thorough._ "

Several arms clamped onto him at once, keeping a firm grip on his casing, while the rest of the arms darted forward, shoving themselves into every gap they could find. But it seemed like—

" _Wait, what if this hurts? What if this_ really _hurts? Oh, I didn't think of that…"_

" _Oh, it will. Believe me, it will."_

" _Are you just saying that, or is it really gonna hurt? Y-you're just saying that, aren't you? You're just—no, you're not, it is gonna hurt, isn't it? Exactly how painful are we tAAAAAAGH!_ "

He'd forgotten about the excruciating process of the core transfer—how could he not, when right afterward he'd practically been crowned king of Aperture? But this was different: rather than a mindless machine rearranging his parts in preparation for attaching him to the chassis, these arms actually had a mind behind them—one that wanted nothing more than to see him suffer.

The mechanical arms— _her_ arms—tugged at his casing and dug through his insides. It wasn't immediately painful—no more pain than he'd felt earlier—but it was uncomfortable as all get-out. Only when he struggled did the pain flare, so he forced himself to keep still, frightfully aware that he could do nothing to stop her.

One arm snagged something. " _Ah, this should do it._ "

Wheatley, feeling the arm tug at something off to the side of his faceplate, began to panic again. "AAAAGH! No, _no,_ you're not supposed to do that! You're not—"

_CRACK._

The right side of his mangled casing cracked just below his handle and involuntarily flared open, exposing his innards. If he were in the chassis, this would not be a problem, aside from the broken piece; he had frequently flared the sides of his casing out to look bigger, then. But like this, when he was just a core with no means to defend himself…

" _That's better. Now let's get a_ closer _look._ "

"Nonono _don't_!" Over half of the arms darted for the opening in his casing, snaking around his gyroscope, motion platform, wires, and other parts, this time a bit less carefully than before. "AAAGH! Stop, stop, _please_!"But GLaDOS didn't even zap him for the command this time, too busy examining every inch of his mechanisms with the arms. They left a scratch here, a dent there, a few torn wires on occasion—half the time, probably on purpose. And with each little dent and scratch and tear, Wheatley automatically writhed, making it all the more agonizing. "Stop stop stop _please_ …"

But she wasn't going to stop. He needed to do _something_ to keep his mind off of whatever she was doing to him, but when every movement increased his pain—

_CRACK._

It was suddenly a lot harder to move his optic.

" _Oops. Did I accidentally break that? Well, it's all part of the learning process._ "

While the pain rendered him mute, he repeated the thought in his processor _don't move don't move don't move_ or he was afraid he would do something worse than crash. When he finally found his voice, he fought the temptation to scream, because that would _not_ distract him, and he needed to do something to get his mind off of this because nothing he said or did would make GLaDOS stop—

His optic flared as an idea struck him. There were a lot of things he'd wanted to say to her; he could still remember the one-sided conversations he'd had in space. Nothing he could do would persuade her to stop, and she couldn't possibly make things any more painful, so what was stopping him?

"Y- _you_!" he cried, glaring straight into her optic, or about as close as he could get to such without moving his own. She didn't acknowledge him, but that didn't matter. "You're the most mad piece of artificial intelligence known to—to— _anything_! You go on and on, daring to call _her_ a murderer when y-you killed all the scientists! Every single bloody one! I was there, I can still remember, e-even though you nearly fried me right before!"

He twitched, sending an additional spark of pain throughout his spherical body, but went on, volume increasing. "A-and if I'm such a bloody moron, how is it that _you_ were the one to end up in a _potato_?"

_CRACK._

It hurt, it hurt oh it bloody hurt but he couldn't stop now, and only forced himself to yell louder. " _You deserved it_! You deserved to be shoved into that potato battery, and smashed into a pit, and you _still_ deserve it! Yeah, I may have left those humans to their deaths, but how many did _you_? And how many humans did you subject to a living death, shovin' 'em into cryosleep until you were ready to test them to death?! And again, the scientists—what did _they_ do to you?! Only gave you a whole bloody facility to run, to do all the Science you ever wanted, and _then_ you try to kill them, when they gave you bloody _everything_!"

 _CRACK_.

"AND _THEN_ THERE'S POOR OL' WHEATLEY, who never got a _thing_ in his life, never even got a bloody job he could keep, never got a _thing_ he could do right, and then one day when he actually gets something—not that bloody chassis you can keep the thing, because he got—h-he got a _friend_ , and then you try to kill her because she killed you even though you bloody _deserved_ it—"

_CRACK._

" _YOU DESERVED IT! AND I WISH SHE'D DONE IT_ _ **AGAIN!**_ I WISH SHE'D KILLED YOU AGAIN AND YOU WOULD'VE STAYED DEAD" _SO YOU COULD NEVER HURT ANOTHER PERSON AND WAIT wait wait why can't I hear—_

" _I'm sorry, what was that?_ " All of the arms had stopped whatever hell they were wreaking on his insides, frozen in their positions. " _Please do go on. Things were just getting_ interesting."

 _I was_ saying _that the lady should have killed you and why can't I talk why can't I talk why can't I talk…_

" _Oh dear. It seems you have completely overworked your damaged vocal processor. What a shame._ " She nudged something inside him with one of the arms. " _I was just about to examine that._ "

Wheatley felt sick, more sick than he'd ever felt before, even when GLaDOS had him swinging from the ceiling and flying around between the walls at high speeds. His speech processor, probably the one part of himself he'd relied on the most, had finally shorted out. He couldn't fall back on his rambling when he was scared, he couldn't even try to talk the crazy AI out of torturing him…

" _Oh, I almost forgot. Wasn't there something_ else _you've wanted to say?_ "

_What is she… no._

" _Something you've wanted to say for, oh, five years?_ "

_No, no, no. This cannot be happening._

" _Yes… You wanted to apologize to that mute lunatic, didn't you? But you can't do that with a broken speech processor. What a shame._ "

Everything was far away. It was too far away to be real. He wasn't in that lair, in GLaDOS's claws—he was back in the depths of the facility, leading _her_ along, and they were escaping together—

" _What did I tell you about hallucinating, moron?_ "

But he _wasn't_ hallucinating because this couldn't be real, because he needed to get out of here and find her. It didn't really matter that it didn't make sense because he wasn't attached to a management rail and he couldn't really move, because he needed to _find_ her and tell her he was sorry for all those horrible things he had done, and she would forgive him, and—

A jolt of electricity brought him back to the chamber, lying on the floor, half-gutted, surrounded by cruel mechanical arms, watched by a malevolent AI, and without any means to move or speak… let alone apologize to the only person he could truly call a friend.

He hardly noticed when the arms whirred back to life, digging through his mangled body. They were threatening to break some other mechanism, but he didn't care. He was shaking uncontrollably, optic occasionally jerking back in a mute, simulated gasp, and cracked vision blurring as he suffered from a deeper pain than GLaDOS could ever inflict on him.


	6. Lift

He hardly knew what was going on anymore. He was constantly drifting in and out of consciousness, crashing and rebooting, crashing and rebooting, never really sure which state he was in most of the time. He'd been hurting for so long, he couldn't remember what it felt like to _not_ be in pain. His hearing and vision still worked, as much as they had before—he still saw double due to the crack in his optic—but it was hard to focus enough through the pain and confusion. And when he _could_ focus enough…

He would see pieces of metal and wire scattered haphazardly around a cold floor, the scene looking like something from the turret redemption line. Except those weren't turret parts.

Occasionally he would hear her voice. It was always mocking, but never directed at him. It was as though she wasn't aware he was there. Perhaps he _wasn't_ actually there.

Maybe he was in Android Hell.

And if he wasn't, what difference would it make?

But there was something. It was completely ridiculous, but his scattered, confused processor was still clinging to something—like a person holding to the edge of a cliff he had little hope of pulling himself onto, but still held _because_ of that little hope. The thought drifted through his processor every once in a while to tighten things up—to bring his thoughts to a focus again, so he wouldn't fade completely away.

He had no hope of ever being able to apologize to _her._ His vocal processor was ruined. If he was lucky, it might emit a burst of static, but that was it. A burst of static was not a spoken apology. But maybe, just maybe…

 _She_ would forgive him anyway.

It was possible, wasn't it? She'd had five years to think it through, five years to cool off. And… and he'd helped her a bit, hadn't he? Even though maybe she really had done most of the work… and he'd done those terrible things afterward, but… but maybe there was _some_ part of him that she would think back to, and say, "You know, it's all right now. I think I forgive him."

Though she was never really one for talking… but just a smile would do.

He would probably never see it, being down here, miles from the surface, but just the thought that maybe she would remember him and smile… It brought a bit of warmth to the cold chamber, and dulled some of the pain in his mangled form.

But maybe he _would_ see it someday. Maybe against all odds, she would come back, or he would find a way out, and see her again. It was an even slimmer chance, but it was still there…

Just a little sliver of hope.

* * *

GLaDOS stared blankly down at the floor, scanning through a set of jumbled files. It had been a while now since she'd so much as glanced at the core, but after the fifth test subject she figured it might be interesting to see if the moron was even functioning anymore. Which he should be, to an extent—she had left enough of him barely intact to be able to see, hear, and feel. Otherwise, his casing and mechanisms were quite thoroughly ruined.

On the bright side, she now had a much more thorough understanding of their workings.

As she browsed through the history in the core's processor, however, her optic narrowed. Yes, his thoughts were mostly scattered and confused, but something within him was preventing him from completely losing his mind.

She spun around to stare at him. There he was, hardly recognizable as a personality core anymore, parts of him scattered around the floor… yet he was _still_ clinging to some kind of hope.

…No, he _had_ completely lost his mind. He was as crazy as the mute lunatic.

She paused.

_The mute lunatic._

* * *

" _What do you think you're_ doing _?_ "

The voice partially dragged Wheatley out of his daze, though he couldn't see what was going on. His view was still the same as ever, and he couldn't remember the last time he could move his optic.

" _You_ don't _belong here._ "

If he could have blinked in confusion, he would have. She certainly wasn't talking to him, but it didn't sound like she was talking to a test subject, either. What was going on? _Wh… who's it you're talking to? Oh… no, that's still not working._ Wearily, he tried to force his optic to move, to look up at the AI above him for some clue as to whom she was talking to, but nothing worked.

" _Put that down. I knew you were a destructive lunatic, but since when were you a thief? You—_!"

If that weren't enough to wake him up more, the crash that sounded somewhere in the depths of the facility was. _Lunatic? But the only person she called_ that _was…_ Slowly his optic glowed brighter, and his thoughts began to focus again.

" _If you truly want to test again, I can certainly arrange that._ "

_CRASH._

Wheatley's optic was back to its usual brilliant glow, making up for the lack of expression in his damaged eye shields. _I-it's_ her _! It has to be! I-I can't believe it, she's come back! Oh man alive, I can't believe it…!_

"Stop _wrecking the facility. This place wasn't meant to substitute for a mental hospital, orphanage, or weight loss clinic, so you are_ not _welcome here._ "

_CRASH._

" _All right, enough of this. If you don't want to test, what are you doing here? I gave you back your precious Companion Cube. What else could you possibly want?_ "

 _Does she want me? Oh please, please, please, maybe she_ does _want me…!_ The surge of hope and excitement he was feeling after days of near-despair was overwhelming. He felt dizzy, like his gyros were off-balance, except he was pretty sure those weren't even connected to him anymore. _Sh-she finally came back for me… She_ does _forgive me!_

" _I know what you want… Stop_ right _there, and I'll have a nice surprise for you in a moment. A_ real _surprise. One I'm probably going to enjoy a whole lot more than you are._ "

Wheatley wasn't paying attention anymore, quite nearly drunk with excitement. The floor suddenly opening around him to reveal several mechanical arms was rather sobering, though. _W-wait, what?_

Able neither to move nor speak, he could not protest as the arms dove at him, grabbing at what remained of his broken internal—and now external—workings. The shock was enough to cause his abused vocal processor to emit a burst of quiet static, but otherwise he was completely helpless as the arms once more began to rearrange his parts, even more rapidly than before, and…

And…

He blinked, then twitched.

 _I… can move_.

Experimentally, he tried to turn his optic. The movement was shaky, but it was amazing that it moved at all. And he could see the various pieces of metal being dragged out of his view, and was suddenly able to feel different parts of himself again. They hurt, yes, but they were _there._

Once he was able to move his optic a little more, he shakily looked up. GLaDOS was hovering directly over him, her yellow optic narrowed into a slit. " _Don't thank me_ ," she said, and he shuddered to hear a _smile_ in her voice, despite that look in her eye. " _I'm not doing this for your benefit._ "

He cringed, but eventually managed something of a smile of his own, pulling up his lower eye shield. _Oh yeah?_ he thought smugly. _We'll see about that._

" _We will indeed._ "

The arms retracted, and he glanced around, testing himself out. His upper handle, dented and bent as it was, was attached again, but his lower handle was still gone. His casing was still banged up, and his internal workings didn't fit together quite as neatly as they had before, but at least he wasn't some disjointed pile of scrap metal anymore. _Can I talk aga—nope, don't have that._ His optic dimmed a little at the thought. _B-but hey, better than nothing, right?_

GLaDOS laughed quietly, and Wheatley's optic contracted to see a large, clear tube snaking out from the wall behind her. It loomed closer until it was directly above him, and the metal at the end opened.

" _Goodbye, moron._ "

There was a tremendous roar of wind as he suddenly found himself being sucked through the tube, barely feeling the cable disconnect from his back port and freeing him from her grip.

* * *

Wheatley tumbled through the pipe, catching glimpses of other pipes that carried about turrets and weighted storage cubes, and occasionally ones that would carry orange or blue gels. It certainly brought back memories—or well, _one_ memory, anyway, and it was a happy one, so that was good enough for him. He tried to ignore the jarring feeling when his dented side occasionally banged against the glass, instead focusing on where he was headed. He wasn't entirely sure where that was, but there was the very strong possibility that _she_ was there.

The tube led him out of the more open part of the facility, and down into the depths, closer to the test chambers. It was getting harder to see, and his flashlight still wasn't working, but that was all right—things were going to get better from here. They _were_. He was getting out—no, _they_ were getting out, because he was going to lead her out! They'd find a management rail, and hook him up to it, and he would _finally_ be able to move, and—

What was that?

Wheatley squinted his optic, trying to see. At the end of the tunnel was a bright light, which he very quickly realized was the bright white floor of a test chamber that he was, quite rapidly, approaching. His pupil contracted to a pinprick.

_Bloody heck._

He managed to snap his eye shields shut and curl his only handle around himself just in time to crash into the floor, sending a fresh wave of pain shooting through him. He groaned silently, and tried moving his handle. After wiggling it around, he managed to make himself roll onto his back, and opened his optic.

And for a moment, he didn't notice the pain.

 _She_ was there.

She looked exactly how he'd remembered her: She wore her old orange jumpsuit with the top pulled down, revealing the white tank top beneath. The equipment was the same—those long-fall boots still strapped to her legs, and the faithful portal gun still in her arms—and then there was her face, with her pale blue eyes cautiously staring down at him.

Suddenly he remembered the last time he saw those blue eyes: wide with panic, as she held onto his handles for her very life, to keep from being sucked out into space. He twitched, sparks shooting out of the corner of his optic as a sick feeling surged through his every circuit. Here they were, and the last time they'd seen each other, he was yelling at her to go fly off into space so he could save himself.

His immediate response was to ramble. _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry please forgive me, I was an absolute monster, I know I was, and I acted completely mad that whole time, but please forgive me, please, I'll never turn on you like that again, you're all I've been thinking of, you were my only friend, I'm so sorry, please forgive me, please, please…_

All that, and the best his vocal processor could do was emit a couple weak bursts of static.

It took him a moment to realize he was shivering, staring up at her with his optic's aperture nearly shut in terror. All he had thought about before was how wonderful it would be to see her again, and how he would say he was sorry and she would forgive him, and then they would escape, and everything would be okay. …But now that he was actually here, at this moment, he found it wasn't happy.

It was _terrifying_.

He was lying helpless at the feet of the person he'd betrayed years ago—the person capable of taking down an enormous AI with nothing but a portal gun. And he couldn't even apologize to her now; the best he could do was give her the most pitiful look he could muster. Even then, he couldn't be certain that she would forgive him. What reason would she even have to do so? She didn't know what he'd just been through, and he couldn't even _tell_ her. He couldn't express how horrible he felt about what he'd done, or how horrible he felt, period, and how he just wanted to help her get out of this madhouse so they could both be free, and…

In a way, it was every bit as terrifying as being with GLaDOS.

The lady continued to stare, and finally took a step toward him.

He cringed.

She took another step closer.

He shut his optic, shaking uncontrollably. _Please, please, I'm so sorry, I know everything I did was wrong, just please forgive me, please…_

The floor was gone, and he jerked in shock, opening his eye again. The portal gun's grip had been activated, holding him up off the ground. His eye shields widened, and he looked into the lady's face in surprise. She didn't like to always give away her emotions so easily, and while she wasn't smiling, he could see that look in her eye… that one he remembered seeing those five years ago. _We're going to get out of here._

Wheatley stared, frozen in shock until the wave of positive emotion crashed over him. He spun around in the portal gun's gravity field and spun in his casing, ignoring the painful creaks that came from the abused metal. He gave a genuine smile that was free from fear, and laughed for the first time in ages. He wished he could thank her—his speech processor was emitting occasional whispering bursts of static as he tried to say "thank you, thank you, thank you" over and over again—but he was sure she could _see_ it. Though maybe not; it seemed like his emotions were glitching, because despite all his happiness, he felt like crying again—

" _There._ " The AI's voice rang throughout the test chamber, killing his silent laughter. " _Now that you've had your happy reunion, I think it's time I did away with you._ "

He looked around the room in a panic, wondering what she was up to now, and the lady did the same, albeit in a more subdued manner. The test chamber was very plain—probably not even finished yet—with the vital apparatus vent he had come out of in one corner, a button in another, and an acid moat dividing the two halves of the room. There was a broken wall where the lady had come in, but it very quickly repaired itself, and a few other panels opened toward the ceiling—

They saw the air vents appear, and knew they weren't about to send fresh oxygen into the room.

Wheatley immediately began looking around the wall closer to the floor. As soon as he found what he was looking for, he wildly jerked his handles— _handle_ , the nerves around the empty spot reminded him—in the direction of a slightly different-looking panel. The lady followed his gaze and rushed over to it, stooping down as the hidden core receptacle opened up from the panel.

The receptacle automatically snagged his upper handle and grabbed uselessly at where his lower handle should have been. Wheatley emitted a silent yelp at the sensation, since neither his handle nor his body managed to fit perfectly into the thing anymore, but he forced himself to focus through the pain—the neurotoxin was already starting to pour into the tiny room, and they had little time. It was hard to make himself spin in his casing the way he was supposed to as he entered the commands into the machine, and at one point, part of his insides caught onto a dented part of his casing, making him twitch and spark at the sudden pain. But he forced himself through it, completing the command and opening one of the nearby panels to the innards of Aperture.

With the command finished, the receptacle dropped him, and he braced himself against hitting the floor. The pain never came—the ladycaught him in the portal gun's grip, and bolted out through the open panel.

They both could breathe easy then, one of them quite literally due to being out of the toxic air, and the other for knowing that the lady had made it out all right. He smiled at her, but was a little bewildered when she didn't smile back. She stared at him, her brow furrowed and serious: _Now what?_

Of course, what was he thinking? They weren't out of this mess yet! He would have to show her the way out, if he could remember. Come to think of it… he _did_ remember! One of the very, very few good things about being in that chassis: he could remember the command he'd used to call the escape lift! Now if they could just find a receptacle close enough to an elevator shaft…

He was suddenly aware of her gaze again, and quickly shifted his upper handle toward the catwalk in front of them. Nodding, she rushed forward, her long-fall boots clanking against the metal floor with each step. The sound was comforting, in a bizarre way; it was almost like old times, when they were running around and disabling the turrets and neurotoxin before going to confront GLaDOS, and… He shuddered, trying to put the part that came afterward out of his mind. Hopefully she hadn't noticed.

With some work, he managed to flip himself, looking around to see just where in the facility they were. From the looks of things, it was in the middle of an old—or incomplete—testing track. There were lifts at the end of each room, he knew, but heading into a chamber was instant death; they would be walking directly into the AI's line of sight. But then, how _would_ they get to one of the elevators? There _had_ to be one somewhere…

He shut his optic, trying to think. There had to be a solution to this—they couldn't get this far just to die at GLaDOS's claws, turrets, or neurotoxin. Though the lady was always the one to solve the problems… and it wasn't like he could ask her anything. Why had he gone and wrecked his own vocal processor like that…?

Heaving a silent sigh, he opened his optic, and gave a start.

They were up against the wall outside another test chamber, and the lady was trying to move aside some of the panels to get in. His pupil contracted, and he spun back around, frantically waving his handle and shaking his head. _No, no, no, don't do that! She'll see us!_

Much to his surprise, she lowered the portal gun and released the grip, setting him on the floor of the catwalk. _No, no, what's she doing?!_ He looked back up, watching as she resumed tugging on the arm of a panel before finally forcing it open. Frantically she stuck her head and arm in, glanced around, and fired the portal gun several times.

_Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk._

" _Vital te—vital testi—vital—vital testing apparatus destroyed_."

The lady shoved the panel open further, grabbed Wheatley with the portal gun, and pulled him into the room. The core stared in amazement at the cameras scattered around the test chamber. Oh, that was _brilliant_.

But something about this test chamber made him pause. It didn't look especially dangerous, but it looked… familiar, and not in a particularly comforting way. There were dark, un-portal-able walls everywhere, aside from a few spots on the upper walls, where the cameras had been, and one at the bottom of a large pit. Something about that pit… he'd seen it before, but—

A bolt of horror seized him when he realized: _this_ was the chamber one of his escapees had died in. And the lady was going to try to—?!

She set him down again, this time to place the portals: one at the bottom of the pit, and one high up on the wall. Retrieving him with the portal gun, she walked toward the edge of the pit, and jumped in.

_NO! No, no, if we land wrong, she'll break her leg, too, and then—_

They were suddenly landing on a platform higher up in the chamber. Wheatley was surprised, but slowly relaxed. Of course, why should he have doubted her? The lady could solve _any_ test. She was brilliant… a lot smarter than he was. But he felt a bit of pride when he remembered he could still do something to help her; he was going to get that lift to the surface, and they would be free.

A few more strategically-placed portals and a couple careful jumps later, they were at the end of the chamber, passing through the emancipation grid and heading toward the elevator.

 _This is it… I can actually be some use to her, now,_ he thought, smiling. Finally, they were going to get out of this living hell… Granted, he wasn't sure just what was on the surface, but anything was better than here. Anything was better than _her._

…Speaking of her, why hadn't she said anything yet? The disabled cameras would prevent her from seeing them, yes, but wouldn't she have detected their going through the grid, and completing the chamber? Was she planning something?

The lady tapped her boot against the floor, bringing him back to attention. Right, he had better get this done now before GLaDOS actually _did_ something. They might be running out of time—what if she was preparing to fill the room with neurotoxin?

There was no lift in the elevator shaft at the moment, but if everything went right, that would soon change. There were screens all over—all of them blank at the moment—but one of them should have had a hidden core receptacle in it. Quickly looking them over, he pointed his handle at one that was close to the entrance. When the lady kneeled by it, the bottom of the screen opened to a hidden receptacle, which snatched him up.

Immediately Wheatley went to work, ignoring the pain of spinning around in his mangled body and focusing on entering the right command. It was hard to think, but he hardly had time to, anyway; GLaDOS wasn't filling the room with neurotoxin yet, but maybe that was because she was planning something different, and that made it all the more frightening. He worked as quickly as he could, ignoring a few grinding noises that came from some of his hastily-repaired innards. He almost had it, almost there…

He managed to get the lift summoned, and heard a _crack_ , immediately filling him with a nauseating stab of pain—but that was all right, that was all right, he almost had it, they would be out of this soon, and then maybe he could get repaired, but he couldn't get repaired and they couldn't get out if he didn't get this right—! If his vocal processor were working, it would have probably simulated panting as he entered the commands to redirect the lift to take them to the surface. Almost…

_Ding._

He heard the elevator doors open, and the receptacle dropped him.

Wheatley laughed silently in relief as he laid there, optic-down on the floor. Finally, it was all over. The lady had come back for him, and he'd helped her out, and now they were on their way out! Away from the darkness, away from GLaDOS, away from all the nasty memories of the things he'd done wrong, away from…

…from…

…What was that noise?

It was a quiet humming noise—not a threatening one, but it was wrong, because it sounded like…

He pushed his handle against the floor until he rolled over, and saw the lift going up without him.

 _No, no, nonononono NO!_ His eye aperture had nearly contracted shut, and he waved his handle and rocked himself wildly, wishing he could scream out to get her attention. She must've been so scared about whatever GLaDOS was planning that she'd accidentally left him, but she would realize her mistake, right? There… there _was_ a control panel in that elevator, wasn't there? There had to be, because any second now she was going to realize she forgot him, any time now…

Slowly she turned and looked down at him. He was relieved at first, but then—

Any other time, he would have died for it. He would have let GLaDOS shock him over and over again, or swing him around, or crush him, or leave him in that room for days on end, or even take him apart and put him back together, if it meant he could _see_ that. If he could just see it… but now, after he'd helped her, as she stood on the lift, as it took her back up to the surface and left _him_ behind, and she looked down at him—

" _Wait… why do we have to leave right now?"_

His insides twisted.

" _Do you have any idea how good this feels? I_ did _this. Tiny little_ Wheatley _did this."_

His vision blurred and refocused—he could see the scene, except he was looking at himself.

" _You know what you are? Selfish. I've done nothing but sacrifice to get us here, and what have you sacrificed? Nothing._ Zero. _"_

He… he was the one that was selfish. He was the one that had sacrificed nothing.

" _You've done nothing but boss me around—well now who's the boss? Who's the boss?_ It's me. _"_

He understood, and that made it so much worse. He understood just how deeply he'd hurt her, how badly he'd backstabbed her, how much he'd _used_ her. And he'd laughed, completely unaware of _why_ she had such a betrayed look in her eye, but now he knew. He felt it all, because as that lift rose…

She smiled.

And he shattered.

* * *

She stared down at the little core, lying limp on the floor, as he had been for the past few hours. It had taken a surprising amount of effort to get him that way—nothing too hard for her, of course—but she'd had to dig through all his memory files, search through some of her own, review the camera footage, even look over test results, just to check the expressions, the movements, the fine details… Not to mention all the simulated movements, sounds, and feelings. It was certainly a challenge to get the illusion just right, but it all worked out. Quite well, actually.

She wasn't _entirely_ happy with the scenario, though. Really, using one of the test elevators to get to the surface? She had truly underestimated his stupidity. But it had, somehow, been believable enough for him, and she could hardly argue with the results.

Ah yes, the results. One pitiful excuse for a personality construct, still in some form of working order, and yet, at the same time, thoroughly and utterly broken.

GLaDOS smiled.

Her little test had been a complete, unparalleled success.


	7. Remains

It was almost sad. Almost.

She did tend to get a little… nostalgic when she successfully completed a test. There was no more data to collect, the Science was done, and there was nothing more to do but move on to another experiment.

That, and determine what to do with the remains of the test.

It was still sitting on the floor of her chamber where she'd left it a while ago, but it certainly couldn't _stay_ there. She was not about to let her chamber become trashed with the remains of an old test, successful or not. She could toss it into the incinerator, of course, but while that worked just fine for old test subject carcasses, it would not work when the test remains were that of an Aperture Science personality construct, which was built to withstand temperatures up to 4000 Kelvin. No, that would simply clutter the incinerator.

That left one option.

GLaDOS lowered her head to glance down at the thing where it lay on the floor, twitching and sparking every so often, but otherwise remaining limp. " _I know you can still hear me,_ " she said, moving to face its optic. It was half-closed and dimly lit, and it tended to flicker. " _Your aural sensors are still online._ "

She knew she was being unreasonable in addressing it as though it were a person when it truly could no longer be considered such. As part of her test, she had quite thoroughly broken it. It had no chance of recovery.

" _Listen to me,_ " she said. When it did not respond, she sent a quick jolt of electricity through it, causing it to convulse for a moment before going limp again. But its optic moved, barely, and she knew it was paying about as much attention as it could muster. " _The test is over. Your presence is no longer needed nor desired in this facility._ "

She lifted her chassis and tilted her head to the side, as though considering something. " _I'm feeling generous. There was something you desired once, wasn't there? And no, I don't mean the mute lunatic's forgiveness, because that obviously is never going to happen._ "

It squirmed a little, and through the connection she could sense a sudden spike of emotional agony that was quickly buried in numbness. Her optic shone in satisfaction.

" _You wanted to leave this place, didn't you? You made several attempts to do so. Several attempts that ended in failure._ " She turned her chassis, gazing down at the thing. " _You never could do a thing right, could you?_ " She paused to allow its fragmented processor to consider this, but it only tried to avoid the thought. " _So_ I'll _do it for you._ "

With the quick issue of a command, part of the floor opened, and a lift rose. " _Here is the lift to the surface—the one that you so graciously allowed that lunatic to use when you gained control of my body. Oh, except you_ didn't _let her use it. My bad._ "

One of her claws reached out, grabbing the remains of her test by its handle. " _But I'm not like you, because I will actually_ allow _you to use the lift._ " She used a mechanical arm to disconnect the cable that linked her to the piece of metallic garbage, and lifted the thing into the air. " _Perhaps you should thank me—but then, you are incapable of so much as whimpering now, so never mind that._ " The claw carried it over to the lift, casually tossing it inside.

The doors closed, and the lift began to rise.

" _I should warn you, though. As vast as my collection of knowledge is, even_ I _don't know what the surface is like now._ " She watched as the lift began to rise past her. " _But I do know one thing: there are no management rails up there._ "

The smile shone through her voice.

" _Have fun moving._ "

Her laughter followed the lift as it carried the remains away from her chamber, never to return.

* * *

The few phrases Wheatley actually registered clawed at his fragmented mind.

… _no longer needed… lunatic's forgiveness… never going to happen… leave… failure…_

While he could not move, he could still flee—and he fled from the memory of the scene, retreating to some other part of his fragmented processor—to an earlier part of his memories. Then some other memory would be in the front of his mind, rather than the memory of what GLaDOS had said and done to him.

Sometimes he would be in some fuzzy, flickering memory from when he was first assembled, other times he would find himself wandering around the facility from job to job. Sometimes he would even be there with the lady, guiding her along through the twisting catwalks. Other times he would be in the chassis, moving things around the facility and shuddering from that dreadful Itch. And then sometimes he would even be in the present, but seeing things that he wasn't sure were actually there—a threatening yellow light hovering just above him, a lady standing tall and strong beside him, a turret somewhere off in the distance, whispering cryptic phrases.

And when that wandering fragment would tread into unwanted territory, another part would jump to the forefront of his mind. One such part was perpetually terrified, wanting desperately to speed away on his management rail. But he couldn't do that, and would usually wind up with his mangled handle curled around him, shivering as he waited for the next bolt of electricity to surge through him, one more spike plate to crush him, or another mechanical arm to gut him.

Another part was a confused mix of anger and depression—he was furious at himself for being so stupid as to betray his only friend, for being so stupid as to get into this situation in the first place, for failing at his original function… He hated the engineers and scientists, he hated GLaDOS, he hated _her_ … and he hated himself. He knew he didn't deserve redemption—and then the depression would kick in. At its worst points, he would look for a way to shut his main processor down, but, for better or worse, never succeeded.

Opposite to that was another part that would flare up on occasion, manifesting itself as rapid babbling within his mind, the words tripping over themselves more often than normal. It was always frantic, reaching out and flailing around for some kind of hold that was not there, but it wouldn't believe that. It kept reaching, giving jumbled reassurances that everything would be all right and that if he just kept reaching he would _find_ that hold that didn't really exist.

And finally, there was that one part of him—the one that was slowly but surely smothering the others—that didn't care. It was not afraid, it was not angry, it was not depressed, it was not delusional—it just did not care. It was numb to everything, even the physical pain, to an extent. He was never going to get rescued, he was never going to get repaired, and he was never going to be forgiven, so why should he care anymore? He would just sit there for eternity, until his battery ran out or until his processor finally wore itself away. Whichever came first. It didn't matter.

It was in that state that Wheatley arrived at the final stop of the escape lift. He blinked dully at the dark room he'd arrived in, and barely flinched when the floor suddenly titled, causing him to roll out of the elevator. He _did_ flinch when the door opened, but that was an automatic reaction to the blinding light that suddenly poured over his metal frame. His optic shrunk to a pinprick, and he shut his eye shields tightly as he rolled out onto the dirt just outside the room.

The door slammed shut behind him.

He tried opening his eye shields again, but the light hurt his optic too much and made it too hard to see what was around him anyway. Waiting for his optic to adjust was too painful, so he shut it again. What a world he'd been dumped into—one he couldn't even see.

But eventually the world dimmed enough to stop blinding him, and he opened his optic to look: an overcast sky, some dirt, and a field of dying wheat.

Not much to look at.

Not that it mattered anymore.

* * *

She stood on the pebbled shore, staring off into the lake and at the bridge that towered over it. It was battered and worn, but it had withstood a lot, much like she had. She'd crossed the bridge a few times, venturing into the world beyond, but found she preferred to stay on the northern side.

There was a good reason for that.

The first time she'd found the bridge, she'd fled across it almost instantly, and went south for some miles. At the time, all she had wanted was to get as far away from _there_ as humanely possible. She would have fled to the other side of the world if she could, but eventually she realized—the fact that she was running proved that the place still had some control over her.

Instantly she had changed her mind, traveling north again until she reached the bridge, and ultimately deciding to cross it. She hadn't stopped upon reaching the other side, but kept going north, until she finally saw the golden wheat field again, with the old shed in the far distance. Nothing had changed.

And she was going to make sure it stayed that way.

Drawing her jacket closer around her form, Chell turned away from the chilly lake breeze and continued her monthly trek.

It had become mostly habit by this point. She'd been going back every month for five years, surveying the general area of the wheat field just to make sure some demon hadn't crawled out of the hell that lay beneath, but nothing had. Nothing changed, other than the weather. In the non-winter months, the trek was almost peaceful.

Now it was late autumn, and the chill was already filling the air. The snow would start any time now, and while it wouldn't stop her, she did want to get this visit out of the way before her path was covered in several feet of snow. It was a long trek, after all—one that lasted a few days.

But it was worth it, just for the peace of mind it gave her—just for the confirmation that the insane AI that had tormented her was still hiding deep underground, cowering from the unknown that was the surface.

And as the night fell around her and she began to set up camp, she paused for a moment to stare up at the sky. The clouds had gone, now, providing her with a clear view of the heavens above, and the moon—the constant reminder that the _other_ AI that had caused her so much pain was far, far away, never to return.

* * *

_The earth was coming into view again. It had been the first time he'd seen it since… well, since_ that _had happened. He found himself gazing down at it, wondering if there was a chance his orbit would change, and if he would wind up back on the planet again. But his orbit hardly seemed any closer… How many years would_ that _take?_

" _Space. Space. Space, space, space. There's a star. There's a star. There's another one. Star. Star. Love space."_

_He cringed a little, looking over at the corrupted core that was orbiting him. It was a long shot, but maybe he knew. "Hey, mate," he said through their short radio, "how many years d'you think it'll take before we wind up back on Earth?"_

" _Comets. Galaxies. Constellations. The Big Dipper. Orion. Cygnus. Gemini. Scorpio."_

" _Look, I-I'm sure those are all great, but,_ I'd _like to—to go back to Earth, if that's all right? Need to apologize to_ her _, if… if she'll let me." He heaved an electronic sigh. "It's a long shot, just like getting back to Earth, but it's something, right?"_

" _Space. Don't wanna leave space."_

"… _Some company you are." He rolled in his casing, trying to face away from the yellow-eyed sphere, and turned to look at the moon, briefly wondering if he was over the human landing site he'd seen before. But much to his surprise, the moon was farther away._

_Much farther away._

_So far away that there was no way for it to appear that small, unless he was…_

…back on Earth.

Wheatley blinked, shuddering in the chilly night, not from the cold, but from the wind that blew around him. The feeling of the chilly air blowing through the cracks and gaps in his casing was utterly foreign and uncomfortable, especially when it knocked around the dirt that had collected within him. Strange, high-pitched noises that did not come from machines creaked all around him, and occasionally he would hear a cry of some distant bird.

The only familiar sight was that of the sky, which reminded him far, far too much of space—and had caused the hallucination.

Space… he wished he'd stayed there. That would've been nice, staying in space, not knowing that the one person you considered a friend hated you and would be only glad to use you and then leave you alone in the claws of a crazy AI that only wants to see you suffer. Why couldn't he be back there, in space? Just staying there, floating around, not having to worry about being crushed or mangled or electrocuted, and going into sleep mode whenever he wanted—

No, no, why was he wishing to be in space again?! It was boring, the Space Core drove him insane, he did nothing but practice apologizing and talk to himself… Not to mention he really _had_ been a moron for getting there in the first place. Yeah, great job there, Wheatley, let's take control of a place you have no idea how to run, and then betray your best friend, and then try to kill her—why are you such an idiot, why can't you do a _thing_ right? Oh, only because you're the Intelligence _Dampening_ Core, that's why. _Designed_ to be a moron.

His optic, which had contracted in anger, slowly relaxed and faded to a dull hue. What was the point in attacking himself like this? It wasn't going to change anything. In the end, he would still be lying here in the dirt in some unknown field on Earth's surface.

Wheatley's thoughts drifted into near-blank numbness for a while. It wasn't pleasant, but it didn't hurt, either, so he stayed that way, even as stars faded, the sky brightened, and the sun nearly blinded him. But his optic slowly adjusted to the light, and it wasn't as difficult or painful to see.

Again, not like there was much to see in the first place. The shed behind him, the dirt beneath him, the far-too-bright sky above, the wheat field all around, and…

…What was that?

* * *

Chell froze.

She'd gotten to the wheat field in record time, and had been looking forward to getting home early when she saw that something was wrong. Something was _very_ wrong.

Without realizing it, she'd gone into a familiar position: partly crouched, right hand up, left hand reaching under the right to support something that wasn't there. Once she recognized this, she sighed, retrieved a gun from her pocket, and crept forward, trying to get a better look. From this distance, it looked like there was just a banged-up hunk of metal sitting there, but she knew better than to overlook something like that. It was sitting right outside the shed, which meant it had come from there, or else had been delivered there.

Neither were pleasant options.

She kept low, the dying plants scratching at her pants as she crept closer and closer to the shed. It wasn't the first time she'd approached the place since leaving it, but with the unknown object sitting there, she couldn't exactly stride up to the place. Her eyes narrowed as she inched forward, trying to discern just what the new object was.

It wasn't terribly remarkable at first—just a dull gray hunk of metal, covered in cracks and dents, and occasionally giving off sparks. That last part was a warning that it was something electronic, which, coming from _that_ place, could mean something _alive._ Given how damaged it was, that might not be the case, but she wasn't going to take any chances.

She took a few steps closer, now about ten feet from the object, and risked standing up a bit straighter. It looked like it might be stirring—and in a jerky movement it turned one inner segment up, the dull optic she'd failed to distinguish earlier opening fully and brightening to a flickering blue.

Gasping sharply, she staggered backward.

It was _him._

Wheatley stared up at her, optic flickering and blinking a few more times before the pupil contracted into a terrified pinprick. His fragmented processor, upon registering just _who_ was standing there, went straight into panic-mode. _No, no, nonono what's she doing here?! Did_ she _come back to have a_ _turn at me?_

Chell stared back, her hand loosely gripping the gun. Of all the things she had imagined would show up outside that shed—an army of sentry turrets, a rocket turret, or a neurotoxin vent, to name a few— _he_ was not one of them. She had left him drifting in space, where he would have no chance of ever hurting her again.

Her shock very quickly gave way to fury. Here she was, having finally settled down into a relatively normal life, and then _he_ shows up. What was he even doing out here? He hadn't crash-landed—there was nothing remotely resembling a crater anywhere nearby. Had he somehow gotten back to the facility and fought his way to the surface? If so, _why_?

Did he honestly think she would forgive him?

Did he really think he deserved _any_ form of forgiveness after betraying her, testing her, and trying to murder her?

Her glare made him all the more frightened, and he shivered badly in his mangled casing. She _was_ going to hurt him—he knew it. But…

The shivering slowly came to a stop, and his optic's aperture relaxed. Whatever she did to him, he knew he deserved it. There was no point in trying to avoid the pain—he was already in pain anyway, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. He stared up at her for a moment before shutting his optic, waiting for her attack.

It never came.

Chell considered it—to say it was tempting was an understatement—but something about his reaction made her pause. She wanted to kick him, to pick him up and chuck him into the wall of the shed, or even to shoot his optic to blind him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it when she saw that _look_ he had. She would've expected him to be begging for his life, giving some half-hearted, frantic apology just to appease her, but he never said a word.

Never looking away from the core, she slowly pocketed her gun and approached him. She could see the damage on him— the scars on his outer plate and across his metal eyelids were ones that she'd seen before, but there were even more now. There was a second scar across his eyelids, a few holes at the top of his casing, cracks all around, dents and places where the metal had buckled, a few wires sticking out here and there, and his lower handle was completely gone.

He'd been through hell.

And she couldn't pity him, when _he'd_ dragged her through the same.

But the fact remained that he did not beg. He did not beg for forgiveness he didn't deserve, he did not claim that he "never meant it," he did not cry, he did not reiterate some insincere apology. He just lay there, waiting.

Wheatley opened his optic a little to see if she was still there.

_Go on. Get it over with_ , he wanted to say.

Chell lifted her foot, and gently pressed the sole of the boot to his side, causing him to rock. He gave off a few sparks and his optic contracted a fraction, but he did nothing otherwise.

He deserved nothing but her hatred, and he knew it.

Chell stepped back and gave a humorless laugh. This was not what she'd expected to come crawling out of Aperture, but maybe it was for the better.

She couldn't stand around here all day. She had a home to return to and a job to get back to. Still, she wasn't going to leave without making sure this place stayed the way she wanted it—completely unchanged.

Before she could question her own actions, she bent down, grabbed Wheatley's remaining handle, and hoisted him up off the ground.

He twitched several times, sparks shooting out of his casing. Cores were programmed to feel comfort at being carried by their handles; otherwise they'd create a fuss over being carted around. But in Wheatley's current condition, the sudden unexpected rush of mixed, confused emotions—his memory of being carried by the engineers, his terror from the pain, his anger at her daring to touch him after what she'd done, his hope that maybe she had changed her mind _,_ and the artificial comfort he was _supposed_ to be feeling—sent his damaged processor into a state of shock.

He had no idea what to expect next.

And neither did Chell, as she carried him away from the shed.


End file.
